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REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


Works  by  the  Same  aAuthor 


Mad  Shepherds.  New  Edition,  illustrated  by 
Leslie  Brooke,  ios.  6d.  net. 

From  the  Human  End.  3s.  6d.  net. 

Philosophers  in  Trouble.  3s.  6d.  net. 

The  Country  Air.  3s.  6d.  net. 

All  Men  are  Ghosts.  3s.  6d.  net. 

Among  the  Idolmakers.  3s.  6d.  net. 

The  Alchemy  of  Thought,  ios.  6d.  net. 

From  Authority  to  Freedom  (the  Life  of 
Charles  Hargrove).  12s.  6d.  net. 

The  Legends  of  Smokeover.  (Hodder  & 
Stoughton.)  12s.  6d.  net. 

Religious  Perplexities.  (Hodder  &  Stoughton.) 
2s.  6d.  net. 

A  Living  Universe.  (Hodder  &  Stoughton.) 
2s.  6d.  net. 

Life  and  Letters  of  Stopford  Brooke. 

2  vols.  (John  Murray.)  15s.  net. 

The  Lost  Radiance  of  the  Christian 
Religion.  (Lindsey  Press.)  is.  6d.  net. 


REALITIES 

SHAMS 


BY 

L.  P.  JACKS 


WILLIAMS  AND  NORGATE 
14  HENRIETTA  STREET,  COVENT  GARDEN,  LONDON 
NEW  YORK:  GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


Printed  in  Great  Britain. 


FOREWORD 


The  essays  in  this  volume  have  been  prompted 
by  reflection  on  the  course  of  events  during 
the  last  nine  years.  They  are  not  a  haphazard 
collection,  but  have  an  underlying  theme  which 
those  who  have  the  patience  to  read  them 
through  will  apprehend  without  difficulty.  Two 
were  written  during  the  war,  four  immediately 
afterwards,  the  others  at  intervals  extending 
to  the  date  of  the  present  publication.  For 
permission  to  reprint  those  that  have  appeared 
before — in  the  Atlantic  Monthly ,  Land  and 
Water ,  The  Modern  Churchman ,  The  Challenge 
— the  courtesy  of  the  editors  is  here  gratefully 
acknowledged.  Most  of  these  have  been  ex¬ 
tensively  revised.  It  is  hoped  that  nothing 
has  been  included  in  the  volume  which  is  out 
of  date. 


Oxford,  October  1923. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

1.  LEST  WE  FORGET . 1 

2.  REALITIES  AND  SHAMS  ....  10 

3.  A  PREVALENT  INCONSISTENCY  .  .  31 

4.  THE  RULE  OF  IDEAS :  A  WAR  -  TIME 

MISGIVING . 42 

5.  THE  POLITICAL  OBSESSION  AND  THE 

LEAGUE  OF  NATIONS  ....  55 

6.  THE  DEGRADATION  OF  POLICY  .  .  66 

7.  THE  VALIDITY  OF  INTERNATIONAL 

COMPACTS . 89 

8.  A  WAY  ROUND . 96 

9.  ON  MINDING  ONE’S  OWN  BUSINESS  .  117 

10.  A  SOLILOQUY  ON  VOTING  .  .  .127 

11.  44  OLD  EDDY” . 133 

12.  THE  POWER  OF  THE  PEOPLE  .  .  143 

13.  ON  TRUSTING  GREAT  MEN  .  .  .153 

14.  LEADERSHIP . 162 

15.  SECRET  DIPLOMACY  ....  173 

16.  COMPULSORY  EDUCATION  .  .  .185 

17.  INSTITUTIONAL  SELFISHNESS  .  .  199 

vii 


4. 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 

1  LEST  WE  FORGET 

That  Matthew  Arnold’s  definition  of  culture — 
“  getting  to  know  the  best  that  has  been  said 
and  thought  ” — goes  to  the  root  of  the  matter 
there  are  many  reasons  for  doubting.  But  it 
seems  likely  that  this  definition  will  continue 
to  exercise  a  weighty  influence  on  the  aims  of 
educational  practice,  and  indeed  we  must  all 
desire  that  it  should  do  so.  Hence  arises  an 
interesting  question  touching  the  fortunes  of 
literature.  As  this  type  of  culture  becomes 
more  diffused  through  the  community,  how  will 
it  affect  the  output  of  new  books  ?  Will  it  in¬ 
crease  or  diminish  the  supply  ?  Will  it  stimu¬ 
late  the  activities  of  authorship  or  restrain 
them  ? 

The  answer  is,  of  course,  that  it  will  do  the 

i  1 


Q 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


one  or  the  other  according  to  the  kind  of  litera¬ 
ture  we  have  in  mind.  In  some  directions  the 
writing  of  new  books  will  be  increased ;  in  others 
it  will  be  diminished.  In  some,  restraint  will  be 

i 

imposed  upon  authorship  ;  in  others,  a  new  in¬ 
centive  will  come  into  being.  Let  us  deal  first 
with  the  restraint. 

Getting  to  know  the  best  that  has  been  said 
and  thought  will  certainly  tend  to  dissipate  the 
illusion  of  originality  in  many  quarters  where  it 
now  exists,  and  so  check  the  writing  of  many 
books  whose  authors  would  otherwise  believe 
they  had  something  fresh  to  say.  The  more 
we  know  of  the  best  that  has  been  said,  the 
more  difficult  shall  we  find  it  to  say  anything 
better,  and  the  more  afraid  of  saying  something 
not  so  good. 

Exploders  of  myths,  for  example,  haters  of 
indeterminate  engagements,  iconoclasts,  hard 
rationalists,  and  no-nonsense  men  in  general, 
who  get  to  know  the  best  that  has  been  done  in 
that  thorough-going  line  of  operation,  will 
think  twice  before  trying  to  improve  on  the 
smashing  blows  delivered  by  Thomas  Paine  in 
the  Age  of  Reason .  Modernists,  again,  who  get 
to  know  the  best  that  has  been  said  in  Modern- 


LEST  WE  FORGET 


3 


ism,  will  be  content  to  name  Literature  and 
Dogma ,  or  God  and  the  Bible ,  without  further 
spilling  of  ink.  And  many  social  reformers,  we 
may  imagine,  who  get  to  know  the  best  that 
has  been  said  on  reconstruction,  will  write  no 
book  of  their  own,  but  merely  ask  for  a  cheap 
edition  of  Unto  this  Last.  Sceptics,  also,  who 
get  to  know  the  best  or  the  worst  that  has 
been  said  by  44  the  spirit  that  denies  ”  (best  and 
worst  being  here  synonymous),  will  find  the 
wind  taken  out  of  their  sails  on  making  the 
acquaintance  of  one  Sextus  Empiricus,  now 
deeply  fallen  into  oblivion  even  among  the 
learned,  but  a  lively  and  amazing  phenomenon 
in  his  own  time,  a  scourge  of  philosophers  and 
a  terror  to  churchmen,  leaving  a  mark  on  their 
works  still  to  be  seen  by  the  discerning  eye  ; 
compared  with  whose  performances,  eighteen 
centuries  ago,  our  latter-day  agnosticism  pales 
to  a  ghost ;  the  said  Empiricus  having  made 
the  interesting  discovery  that  we  cannot  know 
whether  anything  whatsoever,  even  our  own 
philosophy,  is  either  true  or  false,  and  found 
perfect  peace  in  that  conclusion,  though  the 
conclusion  itself,  by  his  own  showing,  was  just 
as  likely  to  be  false  as  true. 


4 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


In  these  and  in  many  other  directions  the 
pursuit  of  culture  will  be  a  constant  warning  to 
us  not  to  let  our  buckets  down  into  wells  that 
dried  up  before  we  were  born,  not  to  cut  new 
coats  out  of  old  breeches,  not  to  make  noises 
that  were  outroared  in  the  vanished  gener¬ 
ations,  not  to  dance  upon  ropes  that  have 
rotted  in  the  rain  of  the  centuries. 

Of  course  there  will  always  be  people  who, 
having  got  to  know  the  best  on  the  matter 
in  hand,  will  be  unaware  that  it  is  the  best, 
and  will  rate  it  second-best,  or  not  good  at  all, 
and  believe  they  can  do  something  better 
themselves — iconoclasts  who  think  they  can  hit 
harder  than  Paine,  modernists  who  think  they 
can  be  more  up  to  date  than  Arnold,  reformers 
who  think  they  can  be  more  beneficent  than 
Ruskin,  sceptics  who  think  they  can  steal 
a  march  on  Sextus  Empiricus.  This  danger 
— that  we  may  get  to  know  the  best  without 
recognising  it  as  the  best — is  a  very  serious  one, 
and  it  was  strangely  overlooked  by  the  author 
of  Culture  and  Anarchy .  It  leads  to  an  immense 
waste  of  energy  in  putting  up  the  significance 
of  things  into  new  parcels,  while  continually 
frittering  away  the  substance  of  the  contents. 


LEST  WE  FORGET 


5 


But  we  may  leave  that  aside  and  confine 
attention  to  the  people  whose  culture  has 
brought  them  not  only  to  the  point  of 
knowing  the  best,  but  to  the  much  higher 
point  of  being  definitely  sure  that  there  is 
nothing  better — to  the  people,  that  is,  who 
know  what  they  are  about.  Upon  them  culture 
will  certainly  act  as  a  restraint  in  the  matter 
of  book-writing.  Books  that  they  would  have 
written  had  they  remained  unacquainted  with 
the  best  they  will  now  not  write.  They  will 
know  them  to  be  unnecessary,  and  they  will  fear 
an  anticlimax.  Such  will  be  the  restraining 
influence  on  authorship  of  getting  to  know  the 
best  that  has  been  said  and  thought.  Let  us 
now  pass  over  to  the  other  side  and  consider 
the  incentives. 

The  man  who  learns  something — and  none  of 
us  can  learn  all — of  the  best  that  has  been  said 
and  thought  about  the  things  that  really 
matter  in  this  world,  will  discover  at  the  same 
time  how  much  of  all  that  has  been  clean  forgotten 
by  the  vast  majority  of  those  who  should  have 
remembered  it.  If  he  is  a  selfish  man  this,  of 
course,  will  not  trouble  him.  He  will  wrap 
himself  round  in  his  fine  new  mantle  of  culture, 


6 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


like  the  soul  in  Tennyson’s  Palace  of  Art,  and 
leave  his  fellow-men  to  wallow  in  their  forget¬ 
fulness  and  to  go  to  the  devil.  But  if  a  spark 
of  fellow  feeling  glows  in  his  breast,  his  first 
impulse  will  be  to  give  these  forgetful  multi¬ 
tudes  a  reminder  of  what  they  have  forgotten, 
and  the  odds  are  that  he  will  write  a  book  for 
that  purpose. 

One  may  even  venture  a  prediction  as  to 
the  kind  of  book  he  will  write.  It  will  show 
signs  of  impatience.  Our  author  will  have 
much  ado,  at  times,  to  restrain  himself  from 
violent  language,  from  taking  his  readers,  so 
to  speak,  by  the  scruff  of  the  neck  and 
shaking  the  forgetfulness  out  of  them.  Indeed 
in  these  days  of  thick-coming  bewilderments, 
when  the  lesson  of  one  “  crisis  ”  is  hardly 
learnt  before  the  onset  of  a  second  blots 
out  the  memory  of  the  first,  there  will  be 
much  to  try  the  patience  of  any  man  who 
is  fortunate  enough  to  become  acquainted 
with  the  best  that  has  been  said  and 
thought.  All  around  him,  for  example,  he 
will  hear  people  clamouring  for  a  leader,  im¬ 
ploring  the  heavens  to  send  them  a  prophet, 
and  whining  over  their  miserable  estate  in  an 


LEST  WE  FORGET 


7 


age  when  there  is  none  to  lead  and  none  to 
prophesy.  At  such  moments  our  man  of  cul¬ 
ture,  like  One  of  old,  will  turn  44  to  the  multi¬ 
tudes  also,”  whose  lot  he  would  otherwise  com¬ 
passionate,  and  feel  tempted  to  cry,  44  Ye  hypo¬ 
crites  !  ”  44  Unhappy  mortals,”  he  will  say, 

avoiding  the  stronger  epithet,  44  your  leader  was 
sent  you  not  long  ago,  but  you  deserted  him, 
as  your  fathers  deserted  his  forerunners,  and 
went  after  your  own  inventions  as  they  did  ; 
your  prophet  has  spoken,  but  you  talked  him 
down  with  the  babel  of  your  own  foolish 
tongues  ;  you  wore  out  his  life  with  your  paltry 
criticisms  ;  you  begged  him  to  be  4  construc¬ 
tive,’  and  whatever  he  constructed  you  in¬ 
stantly  pulled  to  pieces  ;  and  even  when  he 
spoke  in  thunder  you  would  not  hearken,  but 
sat  there  inattentive,  and  preoccupied  in  com¬ 
posing  your  perorations,  waiting  for  your  chance 
to  catch  the  Speaker’s  eye.  So  you  treated  the 
man  whom  Providence  sent  but  yesterday  to 
lead  you  to  the  Promised  Land.  And  will  the 
next  fare  better  than  the  last  ?  Think  you  the 
kind  heavens  will  never  tire  of  sending  you 
leaders  to  desert,  apostles  to  forget,  and  prophets 
to  shoot  at  ?  What,  then,  is  your  notion  of  a 


8 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


leader  and  your  definition  of  a  prophet  ?  Do 
you  define  him  as  one  whose  speech  will  be 
reported  in  to-morrow’s  Times  ?  Must  he  be 
alive  in  the  flesh  that  you  may  heckle  him  ? 
Must  you  have  him  bodily  there,  doing 
obeisance  for  your  miserable  votes  ?  Must  he 
be  convertible  from  leader  into  victim  at  your 
discretion  ?  Must  he  please  you  when  you  are 
drunk  as  well  as  when  you  are  sober  ?  Will 
you  acknowledge  no  man  as  leader  unless  you 
can  get  at  him ,  and  turn  him  out  at  the  next 
general  election,  or  throw  him  down  a  well 
if  he  fails  to  humour  you  ?  Is  none  to  be  ac¬ 
counted  a  prophet  unless  you  have  him  with 
you  in  the  ship,  so  that  you  can  fling  him  over¬ 
board  if  he  looks  dangerous,  with  a  great  fish 
handy  to  swallow  him  ?  Know,  then,  that 
your  leader  has  been  given  you,  he  was  here  not 
long  ago — but  now  he  is  dead.  He  is  the  voice 
you  have  forgotten,  the  man  you  have  deserted, 
now  passed,  happily  for  him,  beyond  the  reach 
of  your  votes,  your  criticisms,  your  intrigues, 
your  turnings-out,  and  your  treacheries.  But 
dead  though  he  be,  and  far  out  of  your  reach, 
he  can  still  lead,  if  you  have  the  ivisdom  to 
follow 


LEST  WE  FORGET 


9 


To  some  such  indignant  utterance  will  the 
man  of  culture,  who  has  taken  pains  to  become 
acquainted  with  the  best,  often  feel  himself 
stung.  His  search  for  the  best  will  bring  him 
to  the  discovery  of  many  a  lost  leader ,  of  whom 
the  world  has  proved  unworthy,  but  whose 
leadership  is  still  available  and  all  the  more 
trustworthy  because  he  is  no  longer  here  to 
solicit  our  votes  and  be  embittered  by  our 
ingratitude.  Books  will  be  written  to  remind 
us  of  that.  Their  motto  will  be  44  Lest  we 
forget.”  In  this  direction  the  spread  of 
culture  will  unquestionably  act  as  an  incentive 
to  authorship. 

No  doubt  there  will  be  other  incentives  and 
other  restraints.  But  the  pair  indicated  may 
serve  as  specimens.  An  increase  of  books  that 
are  necessary,  a  decrease  of  those  that  are 
unnecessary,  will  be  the  general  effect  of 
getting  to  know  the  best  that  has  been  said 
and  thought. 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 

If  the  books  of  the  past  were  remembered, 
how  many  books  of  the  present  would  be  un¬ 
necessary,  and  perhaps  intolerable  !  I  hesitate 
to  name  a  general  fraction,  but  in  philosophy, 
which  has  become  both  forgetful  and  anarchic 
— forgetfulness  is  ever  a  close  companion  of 
anarchy — I  venture  the  guess  that  half  of  what 
is  now  being  published  is  an  inferior  version  of 
what  was  better  done  long  ago.  In  these  days 
of  confusion  the  mind  has  no  settled  resting- 
place,  thought  is  a  dweller  in  tents,  memory 
shortens,  and  the  book-trade  reaps  the 
advantage. 

How  much  thought,  valuable  in  its  day  and, 
for  aught  we  know,  valuable  now,  lies  buried  on 
the  shelves  of  yonder  library  !  Those  forgotten 
volumes  of  the  men  of  old,  opened  only  when 
the  librarian  takes  stock;  those  later  classics 

of  the  mother  tongue,  mid-Victorian  it  may  be, 

10 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


11 


which  the  rising  generation,  fed  on  44  books 
about  books,”  has  learnt  to  take  as  read,  were 
they  not  in  their  time  and  place  the  very  last 
things  out  ?  Men  ran  to  the  booksellers’  shops 
to  buy  them,  and  cried  of  them,  as  they  met 
one  another,  44  Have  you  read  this  ?  Have  you 
read  that  ?  ”  I  see  one  yonder  that  kept  the 
London  coffee-houses  in  an  uproar  for  months 
and  caused  gentlemen  in  wigs  to  whip  out  their 
swords  :  you  would  not  hit  the  title  in  a 
hundred  guesses.  Another,  in  praise  of  Justice, 
whose  author  could  not  stir  abroad  but  a  mob 
gathered  at  his  heels  and  pelted  him  with  mud. 
Another,  with  an  eighteenth-century  date  on 
its  worm-eaten  title-page,  which  quenched  for 
ever  (so  they  said)  the  doubts  of  men  concern¬ 
ing  the  existence  of  God.  Who  can  say  that 
what  I  am  writing  now  is  not  a  disinterment  of 
what  is  written  in  one  of  those  books  ?  Not  I 
certainly.  The  world  of  books  has  become 
like  a  congested  churchyard.  Every  grave  we 
dig  disturbs  the  resting-places  of  the  buried 
generations.  We  cannot  stir  the  ground  to 
plant  a  tree  or  a  rose-bush  but  the  spade  turns 
up  the  jawbone  of  a  prophet. 

44  But  it  is  only  the  rubbish  that  men  forget 


12 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


— and  a  good  thing  too  !  No  genuine  accent 
of  the  Holy  Ghost  was  ever  lost.”  I  am  not 
so  sure.  Not  long  ago  I  purchased,  on  the 
break-up  of  a  well-known  library,  where  it  had 
been  for  many  years,  the  large  paper  edition 
in  thirty  volumes  of  the  Collected  Works  of 
Thomas  Carlyle.  In  every  volume  the  pages 
were  uncut.  I  remembered  the  owner  of  that 
library,  who  was  a  man  of  learning,  his  large 
family,  how  one  of  his  sons  is  now  a  distin¬ 
guished  servant  of  the  State,  and  a  sadness 
came  over  me  as  I  thrust  my  paper-knife  into 
those  uncut  pages. 

Is  it  not  deplorable  that  writings  so  admir¬ 
able  should  have  become  back  numbers  to  the 
young  souls  of  the  rising  generation  ;  that  a 
light  so  precious  should  be  lost  amid  the 
dazzle  of  fireflies  and  wills-o’ -the- wisp  that 
flicker  in  our  troubled  air  ?  Wrong  in  judg¬ 
ment,  faulty  in  temper,  violent  in  diction  we 
know  that  Carlyle  often  was,  but  for  scope  of 
vision,  for  penetration  of  insight,  where  among 
the  living  shall  we  find  his  match  ?  44  They 

call  me  fine  writer  and  all  that,”  he  said  in  his 
old  age,  44  but  who  of  them  has  believed  my 
report  ?  ”  Well,  his  44  report  ”  is  easier  to 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


13 


believe  in  these  days  than  it  was  in  those. 
Much  of  it  has  been  fulfilled,  and  is  being 
fulfilled,  under  our  eyes.  The  best  of  his 
writings,  read  at  the  present  hour,  are  pre¬ 
dictions  come  true. 

In  the  Latter  Day  Pamphlets ,  for  example, 
we  may  find  a  startling  diagnosis  of  our 
present  anarchies,  their  cause  and  their  cure? 
set  forth  with  a  prescience  that  makes  the 
book  more  appropriate  to  1923  than  to  1850. 
The  cause  is  Sham ;  the  cure  is  Reality ; 
the  main  difference  between  this  time  and  that 
being  that,  now,  Reality  is  held  in  less  honour 
and  Sham  come  to  a  more  dangerous  head. 
The  harvest  of  calamity  foreseen  by  Carlyle, 
as  the  certain  consequence  to  states,  nations, 
and  societies,  of  turning  their  backs  on  Reality 
and  committing  their  fortunes  to  the  guidance 
of  Sham,  we  have  actually  reaped  and  are 
still  reaping.  The  recent  war  was  unquestion¬ 
ably  the  offspring  of  Sham,  and,  as  might  be 
expected,  the  44  peace  ”  that  followed  was  a 
Sham  of  the  first  magnitude,  thereby  com¬ 
pleting  the  circle.  Nor  is  there  any  way  out 
of  these  troubles  save  the  arduous  one 
which  leads  back,  through  the  sacrifice  of 


14 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


many  illusions,  to  the  Realities  we  have 
deserted. 

Of  which  Realities  the  first  is  Duty,  as 
Carlyle  said.  For  a  long  time  past  our  civilisa¬ 
tion,  under  the  guidance  of  sham  religion  and 
sham  politics,  has  been  developing  contrivances 
for  enabling  men  to  evade  the  stern  demands 
of  individual  duty  and  to  create,  by  mass- 
machinery,  values  which  can  only  be  created 
by  each  man  doing  the  task  which  lies  nearest 
to  him  with  all  his  might.  This  mass-con¬ 
trivance  for  getting  duty  done,  while  the 
individual  is  left  free  to  serve  the  devil  at  his 
pleasure,  is  the  summary  Sham  of  modern 
times. 

And  yet  in  the  very  infatuation  of  their 
attempt  to  make  a  mass-machine  that  will  do 
their  duty  for  them,  men  still  pay  homage  to 
the  truth  that  duty  must,  somehow,  be  done. 
With  all  their  backslidings  in  this  matter,  with 
all  their  evasions,  spurious  dialectics,  and 
hollow  sophistries,  men  still  remain  solid  in 
the  conviction  that,  whatever  else  happens  to 
Duty,  done ,  by  one  means  or  another,  it  must 
be.  This  is  the  one  accent  of  the  Holy  Ghost 
that  cannot  be  lost,  the  one  link  with  Reality 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


15 


that  all  the  powers  of  darkness  cannot  break — 
the  sheet  anchor  of  mankind. 

In  spite  of  many  valiant  attempts,  philosophers 
have  not  yet  succeeded  in  making  it  clear  why 
there  should  be  anything  but  Reality  in  the 
universe,  why  Sham  should  parade  there  at  all. 
Some  have  found  relief  in  the  doctrine  that 
Reality  exists  in  degrees — everything  being 
real  according  to  its  kind,  Sham  at  the  bottom 
and  Perfection  at  the  top.  But  why  Reality 
should  spread  itself  out  in  this  manner,  thin¬ 
ning  off  in  one  direction  towards  pure  Sham 
and  concentrating  in  the  other  towards  pure 
Perfection,  remains  a  mystery,  which  is  equally 
mysterious  whichever  way  you  read  the  story 
— the  pure  article  “  evolving”  into  the  counter¬ 
feit,  or  the  counterfeit  into  the  pure  article  ; 
the  thick  reality  into  the  thin,  or  the  thin  into 
the  thick.  Lord  Haldane,  for  example,  tells 
us,  in  his  Pathway  to  Reality ,  how  Reality  can 
be  found.  But  the  mystery  is  that  we  should 
ever  have  lost  it  and  need  a  philosopher  to 
teach  us  how  to  find  it.  One  would  think  that 
the  business  of  Reality  is  just  to  be  real  and, 
therefore,  that  it  can  never  water  itself  down, 


16 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


nor  suffer  any  man  or  devil  to  water  it,  into 
a  Sham.  Yet  the  Shams  are  there,  none  the 
less  noxious  whatever  we  may  call  them,  but 
the  more  hateful  when  called  by  names  which 
seem  intended  to  disguise  their  noxiousness. 
To  understand  this  queer  construction  of  the 
universe  has  been  a  sore  travail  to  the  sons 
of  men,  and  so  it  will  remain  to  the  end  of  the 
chapter. 

Perhaps  we  should  be  well  advised  to  confine 
ourselves  to  a  task  more  within  the  compass  of 
our  forces,  that,  namely,  of  finding  some  test  by 
which  to  distinguish,  some  clue  by  which  to 
disentangle,  the  Shams  from  the  Realities  in  a 
world  where  they  are  so  strangely  intermingled. 
Of  such  tests  or  clues  there  are  at  least  two 
which  the  plain  man  can  apply  for  himself. 

The  first  test  is  Order,  Whenever  the  affairs 
of  men  are  moving  towards  Order  we  may  con¬ 
clude  at  once  that  the  motives  of  their  action 
are  derived  from  Reality,  Order  being  Reality’s 
first  law.  Contrariwise,  when  life  becomes 
anarchic,  whether  in  states  or  in  individuals, 
the  presumption  is  strong  that  Shams  are 
abroad  and  that  men  are  the  victims  of  them. 
It  was  in  these  terms  that  Matthew  Arnold 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


17 


read  the  signs  of  his  times.  He  too  saw 
anarchy  on  the  horizon,  and  traced  its  origin 
to  Shams.  The  public  life  of  England,  he  said, 
was  44  a  Thyestean  banquet  of  claptrap.” 
Culture,  he  thought,  was  the  remedy,  as  no 
doubt  it  is,  provided  we  have  it  of  the  right 
kind. 

The  second  test  is  Reserve .  Most  of  the 
good  deeds  in  the  world  are  done  in  secret, 
and  the  best  deeds,  and  the  best  part  of  every 
deed,  cannot  be  done  otherwise.  The  major 
operations  of  the  universe  take  place  in  the 
same  manner;  that  which  sees  the  light  in 
sense  or  in  science  being  no  more  than  a  pass¬ 
ing  glimpse  of  what  goes  on  in  the  great  deeps, 
itself  unknown,  but  lending  an  infinite  signifi¬ 
cance  to  the  little  we  know.  Of  nothing  what¬ 
soever,  from  the  atom  of  hydrogen  to  God 
in  the  heavens,  is  the  whole  Reality  offered  to 
view ;  so  that  anything  which  pretends  to 
exhibit  the  whole  of  itself  in  public  may  be 
set  down  without  more  ado  as,  to  that  extent, 
a  Sham. 

The  44  public  life  ”  of  a  nation  is  a  notable 

example.  As  wise  historians  are  now  beginning 

to  recognise,  the  part  of  a  nation’s  life  which 

2 


18 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


attains  notoriety,  or  gets  itself  visibly  or  audibly 
published,  is  a  small  affair  compared  with  other 
parts  which  never  come  into  public  at  all,  these 
latter  being  transacted,  like  the  best  deeds  and 
the  major  operations  of  the  universe,  under 
conditions  which  do  not  invite  the  presence  of 
reporters.  Whenever,  therefore,  this  44  public 
life  ”  begins  to  set  itself  up  for  the  whole  life 
of  the  nation,  or  even  the  most  important  part 
of  it,  it  immediately  becomes  infected  with 
Sham,  breaks  out  into  senseless  wars,  and  con¬ 
fusion,  the  other  mark  of  Sham,  ensues. 

Idolatry,  both  ancient  and  modern,  and  in 
all  its  varieties,  which  are  many,  exemplifies 
the  same  process.  An  idol  presents  the  divinity 
complete,  finished  off,  with  nothing  left  out  to 
the  last  coat  of  varnish.  We  can  place  our 
idol  on  a  public  pedestal ;  say  of  him, 44  Lo  here, 
lo  there  ”  ;  walk  round  him  ;  view  him  behind 
and  before  ;  evaluate  him  as  a  work  of  art ; 
criticise  him  as  a  construction  of  philosophy  ; 
photograph  him  from  every  angle  of  vision  ; 
multiply  him  into  millions  of  copies  each  in¬ 
distinguishable  from  himself  and  from  one 
another.  We  can  pack  him  in  a  wooden  box 
or  in  a  formula  ;  send  him  off  by  parcel  post, 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


19 


goods  delivery,  or  telegraph  according  to  his 
measured  dimensions,  weight  avoirdupois,  or 
cost  at  a  penny  a  word  ;  whoever  gets  him  gets 
the  whole  of  the  god  ;  there  he  is,  and  there  is 
no  bit  of  him  anywhere  else.  What  more  is 
needed  to  prove  him  a  sham  ?  At  every  point 
reality  disowns  him,  and  Nature  says  44  He  is 
not  mine.”  His  all-completeness  betrays  him. 
His  finish  undoes  him.  His  self-repetitions 
declare  him  manufactured.  His  self-sufficiencies 
reduce  him  to  naught.  His  portableness  marks 
him  an  abstraction,  and  the  care  with  which  he 
is  tied  up  suggests  contraband.  Becoming 
known  at  all  points,  he  becomes,  at  the  same 
time,  not  worth  knowing,  except,  perhaps,  to 
the  police.  They  labour  in  vain  who  seek  to 
discredit  religion  by  proving  the  unknowable¬ 
ness  of  God.  What  discredits  religion  is  not 
the  unknowableness  of  God,  but  the  knowable- 
ness  of  Mumbo-Jumbo. 

And  so  with  things  in  general.  The  more 
real  they  are,  the  more  of  them  is  unexposed  ; 
the  less  real,  the  less  there  is  for  the  imagination 
to  fill  in  and  for  the  heart  to  love.  There  is 
more  reality  in  the  whispers  of  death  than  in 
the  clamours  of  life ;  more  in  the  dances  of 


20 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


beauty  round  a  single  setting  of  the  sun  than 
in  all  the  eloquence  poured  forth  since  election¬ 
eering  began  :  the  reason  being,  not  that  the 
clamours  and  the  eloquence  mean  nothing,  but 
that  they  pretend  to  more  meaning  than  they 
have ;  while  the  whispers  of  death  and  the 
dances  of  beauty  are  content  to  be  regarded  as 
quite  meaningless  by  the  majority  of  mankind, 
and  take  no  pains  to  persuade  anyone  of  the 
contrary.  All  realities,  God  included,  act  as 
though  they  had  nothing  to  gain  from  the 
plaudits  of  the  multitude. 

Not  all  philosophers  have  been  explicit  at 
this  point.  They  have  drawn  a  distinction 
between  “appearance”  and  44  reality,”  some 
holding  that  we  can  know  the  former  but  not 
the  latter  :  a  curious  doctrine,  since,  if  it  wTere 
true,  it  is  pretty  obvious  that  nobody  could 
ever  find  it  out ;  in  which  case  we  should  be 
living  in  a  mixed  world  of  Realities  and  Shams, 
but  unable  to  tell  which  was  which,  or  even  to 
assure  ourselves  that  any  difference  existed  be¬ 
tween  the  two — like  our  recent  acquaintance 
Sextus  Empiricus.  Let  the  difference  between 
the  two  mean  what  it  may,  we  should  certainly 
be  mistaken  in  assuming  that  every  44  appear- 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


21 


ance  ”  is  fraudulent ;  for  the  whisper  of  death 
and  the  dance  of  beauty  are  also  “  appearances,” 
and  they,  most  assuredly,  are  no  shams.  Every 
“  appearance  ”  is  real  as  far  as  it  goes,  becoming 
fraudulent  only  when  it  yields  to  the  craving 
for  publicity  and  pretends  to  be  the  whole  of 
what  appears,  as  the  clamours  of  life  are  wont 
to  do ;  but  the  whispers  of  death  and  the  dances 
of  beauty,  never  !  The  barest  minimum  of 
publicity  is  enough  for  the  real ;  Shams  seek 
the  maximum  and  are  never  satisfied. 

It  follows  from  all  this  that  the  reality  of  a 
thing  should  be  sought  for  in  its  least  obtrusive 
aspect ;  the  reality  of  the  soul ,  in  that  part  of 
man  which  has  least  to  say  for  itself.  Verbosity 
being  the  medium  in  which  reality  soonest  dis¬ 
solves,  whatever  has  most  to  say  for  itself,  and 
repeats  it  often,  is  likely  to  be  unreal,  or  on 
the  way  to  become  so.  As  a  test  between 
Reality  and  Sham,  qui  s'excuse  s'accuse  is 
almost  infallible.  In  literature,  Reality  has  its 
home  between  the  lines  ;  the  philosopher  leaves 
it  unproved,  the  orator  unstated,  the  poet  un¬ 
sung;  all  three  can  hint  at  it,  the  poet  most 
happily,  but  no  more.  Naturally  it  shuns  the 
limelight,  and  with  the  art  of  advertisement, 


22 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


where  all  Shams  are  expert  and  industrious,  it 
has  nothing  whatever  to  do.  For  the  same 
reason  it  avoids  repetition .  That  which  can  be 
endlessly  repeated,  without  change  of  mean¬ 
ing,  is  an  abstraction,  and  most  Shams  are 
simply  abstractions  pretending  to  be  something 
more.  But  the  words  of  the  wise  are  alive  with 
the  vitality  of  the  fact ,  which  varies  with  the 
soul  that  apprehends  it.  Great  sayings,  we  are 
told,  enrich  their  meaning,  or  become  more  real, 
with  the  lapse  of  ages.  This  is  true ;  but  it  is 
not  repetition  that  enriches  the  meaning  of  any¬ 
thing.  A  truth  is  enriched  by  the  experience 
of  those  who  translate  it  into  the  substance  of 
their  lives,  which  causes  it  to  bear,  each  time 
they  utter  it,  a  new  accent ,  and  so  become 
virtually  a  new  truth.  For  it  is  the  way  of 
Reality  to  reveal  its  presence  less  by  the  fixed 
and  inanimate  form  of  the  word,  and  more  by 
the  living,  breathing,  and  ever-changing  accent¬ 
uation ,  which  is  a  kind  of  overtone,  or  singing 
accompaniment,  to  what  is  audibly  said  or 
visibly  written.  Apart  from  their  wonderful 
fertility  in  overtones,  great  sayings  mean  more 
on  their  first  utterance  than  they  ever  mean 
afterwards.  It  is  their  nature  to  be  impover- 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


23 


ished  by  those  who  go  about  merely  repeating 
them,  the  overtones,  which  enrich  them,  coming 
out  only  when  the  sayings  are  acted  upon  as 
soon  as  they  are  heard — one  of  the  deeper 
secrets  of  the  Christian  religion,  though  clean 
contrary  to  the  general  belief. 

Try,  then,  to  preserve  the  reality  of  a  great 
saying  by  mere  verbal  repetition,  or  multipli¬ 
cation  of  copies,  and  (in  spite  of  M.  Coue)  you 
will  find  it  continually  evaporating  until  finally 
there  is  nothing  left  of  it  but  a  spectre.  Such 
are  the  vain  repetitions  of  the  heathen,  whether 
in  argument  or  in  prayer.  Take  the  word 
“  God,”  for  example,  make  it  into  a  philosophi¬ 
cal  counter,  keep  it  circulating  as  a  medium  of 
argumentative  exchange,  and  presently  you 
will  arrive  at  the  point  where  you  have  to  say, 
with  Scotus  Erigena,  Deus  non  immerilo  nihil 
vocatur,  “  God  is  not  improperly  called  nothing  ”  ; 
and  though  you  may  add  the  words  per  excel - 
lentiam ,  as  Erigena  did,  the  excellentia ,  repeated 
too  often,  will  be  not  improperly  called  nothing 
along  with  the  rest.  The  same  has  happened,  or 
may  happen,  to  many  leading  terms  of  our  politi¬ 
cal  vocabulary,  such  as  democracy,  supremacy  of 
the  people,  self-determination,  league  of  nations, 


24 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


labour,  capital,  socialism,  individualism,  and, 
notably,  to  the  word  44  policy  ”  itself.  All 
these  terms,  instead  of  gaining  reality  by  repeti¬ 
tion,  lose  it,  until  finally  they  enter  the  state  of 
pure  spectrality,  when  we  have  to  say  of  each 
in  turn,  non  immerito  nihil  vocatur . 

In  contrast  to  all  this,  Reality  steals  among  us 
under  a  deep  reserve,  not  only  having  very  little 
to  say  for  itself,  but  repeating  that  little  as  seldom 
as  possible,  and  never  with  the  same  accent 
twice.  Its  conversation  is  44  Yea,  yea ;  nay,  nay.” 
It  cometh  not  with  observation,  and  the 
overtones  that  reveal  it  are  inaudible,  save  to 
lovers  of  the  44  unheard  melodies  ”  singing 
their  endless  variations  in  the  universe  and  in 
the  soul.  In  short,  the  reality  of  things  is 
inversely  proportional  to  the  noisiness  of  their 
self-announcement.  Whatever  comes  bouncing 
in,  with  a  brass  band  in  front  of  it  and  a  crowd 
of  people  shouting  44  Ditto,  ditto,”  behind  it, 
is  pretty  sure  to  be  a  sham.  Reserve,  then, 
is  the  test.  The  old  religions  recognised  this  in 
their  reluctance  to  utter  the  name  of  God,  and 
in  the  penalties  they  denounced  against  those 
who  took  it  in  vain. 

The  habit  of  recognising  Realities  by  their 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


25 


reserve,  and  Shams  by  their  blatancy,  is 
not  easily  formed.  At  every  step  we  have  to 
contend  against  the  stock  notion  that  the 
nature  of  Reality  is  to  rush  into  print  and  to 
promote  a  controversy.  Nothing  could  better 
show  how  deeply  the  two  things  have  become 
confused.  It  is  the  Shams  that  rush  into  print, 
while  the  Realities  creep  into  it  reluctantly,  or 
keep  out  of  it  altogether.  The  proper  vehicle 
for  the  expression  of  Reality  is  not  print,  but 
the  silent  work  of  the  world  and  the  personal 
characters  of  men  and  women,  grounded,  as  for 
ever  they  must  be,  on  the  value  of  the  work 
they  produce.  It  is  as  certain  as  anything  can 
be  in  this  universe  that  until  we  express  Reality 
in  that  manner  we  do  not  express  it  at  all. 
Nothing  that  print  can  accomplish  will  serve 
the  purpose  unless  we  have  a  background  in 
daily  work  and  personal  character  to  interpret 
and  sustain  it.  What  is  great  literature  but 
the  echo  of  splendid  achievement  ?  What  age 
of  shoddy,  what  nation  of  jerrybuilders,  what 
race  of  cowards  has  ever  produced  an  immortal 
book  or  sung  an  immortal  song  ?  It  is  the 
work  that  explains  the  literature,  not  the 
literature  that  explains  the  work.  The  key 


26 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


to  the  word  is  in  the  deed.  But  all  this  we 
have  turned  upside-down,  framing  our  “  cul¬ 
ture  ”  accordingly,  and  the  task  of  our  times  is 
to  restore  it  to  the  right  position.  And  a  most 
difficult  task  that  is. 

To  reconcile  Reality  with  Sham  is  for  ever 
impossible,  the  relation  of  the  two  in  the 
universe  being  that  of  flat  and  eternal  anti¬ 
pathy.  Not  long  ago  we  heard  one  careless 
of  his  speech  attempting  to  reconcile  them. 
He  was  discoursing  with  much  applause  of 
evolution.  The  universe  he  described  was  so 
benignly  arranged  that  error  (by  a  “slow  and 
gradual  ”  process,  of  course)  “  evolved  ”  into 
truth,  and  evil  into  good.  To  which  the  answer 
must  be  made,  that  if  such  a  universe  exists, 
most  assuredly  it  is  not  the  one  in  which  we 
are  living.  Here  things  do  evolve — who  would 
question  it  ? — but  in  a  very  different  manner. 
The  lesser  lie  evolves  into  the  greater  and  the 
bad  evolves  into  the  worse,  not  “  slowly  and 
gradually,”  but  with  a  rapidity  that  is  appal¬ 
ling.  Lies  and  evils  begin,  like  everything  else, 
in  “  undifferentiated  homogeneity,”  and  may 
end,  almost  before  you  know  where  you  are, 
in  “  differentiated  heterogeneity.”  But  they 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


27 


do  not  turn  into  their  opposites,  and  will  not 
in  a  billion  years.  The  notion  that  they  do  is 
one  of  the  drowsy  syrups  which  sweeten  the 
44  banquets  of  claptrap.”  And  there  is  none 
more  debauching. 

Between  the  rule  of  Realities  and  the  rule 
of  Shams  the  difference  is  infinite  —  nothing- 
less.  The  two  are  incommensurable.  Let 
none  of  us  say,  then,  44  It  is  better  to  be 
ruled  by  this  than  by  that.”  Better?  Is  the 
rule  of  Sham,  then,  good  up  to  a  point,  only 
not  so  good  as  the  rule  of  Reality  ?  As  God 
lives  it  is  not  good  at  all !  How  many  a 
poisonous  lie  is  taking  cover  at  this  moment, 
and  thriving,  under  the  foul  delusion  that 
while  truth  is  certainly  better  than  falsehood, 
falsehood  after  all  is  tolerably  good,  and  per¬ 
haps  good  enough,  since,  if  we  wait  upon 
events,  it  will  44  evolve  ”  into  its  opposite ! 
44 Degrees  in  reality,”  do  you  remind  me? 
If  degrees  in  reality  lead  to  that ,  let  an  honest 
man  beware  of  them  !  This  also  will  be 
found  in  Carlyle. 

44  But,”  the  perspicacious  reader  will  now  be 
saying,  44  if  Reality  is  to  be  known  by  its 


28 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


abhorrence  of  vociferation  and  by  its  reluctance 
to  rush  into  print,  what  are  we  to  think  of  this 
essay  ?  Will  it  not  fall,  by  its  own  showing, 
under  the  denomination  of  Sham  ?  Will  it  not 
go  down  into  the  pit  with  the  idols  ?  Will  it 
not  share  the  fate  of  Sextus  Empiricus,  who, 
having  discovered  that  nothing  can  be  dis¬ 
covered,  proceeded  forthwith  to  announce  that 
particular  discovery  ?  ” 

The  conclusion  seems  inevitable.  But  we 
are  fighting  in  a  better  cause  than  Sextus 
Empiricus.  He  was  contending  that  you 
cannot  know  the  difference  between  sham  and 
reality,  or  even  whether  there  is  a  difference 
at  all ;  we  are  contending  that  there  is  a 
difference,  and  an  infinite  one  too,  that  you 
can  know  it,  and  that  your  soul’s  salvation 
begins  in  that  knowledge.  And  if  the  reader 
concludes,  as  Logic  demands,  that  by  our 
vociferation  and  eagerness  to  rush  into  print 
we  are  fallen  into  our  own  net,  does  he  not 
thereby  accept  that  very  rule  for  the  detection 
of  sham  which  we,  at  great  risk  to  our  reputa¬ 
tion  for  consistency,  have  been  copiously  recom¬ 
mending  to  him  ?  In  which  case  the  point  of 
this  essay,  sham  or  no  sham,  is  definitely  won. 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


29 


Hoisting  the  shams  with  their  own  petard,  we 
have  blown  ourselves  up  along  with  our  enemy, 
as  we  knew  very  well  would  happen  ;  and  we 
suggest  to  the  reader,  for  whom  we  have  done 
this  service,  that  it  ill  becomes  him  to  make  a 
mock  of  our  self-immolation  and  to  spurn  at 
our  mangled  remains.  We  credit  him  with  a 
larger  mind.  A  sigh,  and  not  a  sneer,  is  what 
we  expect  from  him.  Naturally,  however,  he 
will  read  no  further,  since  the  honest  man, 
having  detected  the  sham,  will  have  nothing 
more  to  do  with  it.  But  if,  as  we  are  shameless 
enough  to  hope,  he  endures  our  company  a 
little  longer,  we  shall  then  have  to  remind  him, 
as  gently  as  we  can,  that  his  adoption  of  the 
aforesaid  conclusion,  which  condemns  us  as 
fraudulent,  was  not  quite  sincere.  If  it  were,  he 
would  leave  us  at  once.  As  for  ourselves,  who 
are  of  minor  consequence  in  the  matter,  perhaps 
we  are  not  so  eager  to  rush  into  print  as 
our  sharp-witted  critic  imagines.  Perhaps  we 
thought  all  these  things  when  we  were  young, 
and  restrained  ourselves  from  saying  them  till 
we  were  old.  Perhaps  we  would  rather  hold  our 
peace  even  now.  Who  knows  ?  At  all  events, 
our  spiritual  freedom  has  survived  so  many 


30 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


bludgeonings  from  the  Law  of  Contradiction, 
which  has  been  trying  to  make  a  fool  of  us  all 
our  life,  and  so  hardened  are  we  in  our  defiance 
of  that  kind  of  logic,  which  we  regard  as  a 
typical  half-reality  putting  on  the  airs  of  a 
whole  one,  that  we  propose  as  soon  as  possible 
to  introduce  the  topic  of  the  next  essay,  which 
is  “  A  Prevalent  Inconsistency.” 


A  PREVALENT  INCONSISTENCY 


Those  who  study  the  working  of  their  minds 
in  these  critical  times — and  it  is  wise  to  do  this 
occasionally — will  perhaps  join  me  in  confessing 
to  a  measure  of  inconsistency.  I  am  not  speak¬ 
ing  of  logic,  but  of  temper — of  changing  moods  ; 
as  when,  for  example,  a  man  is  by  turns  de¬ 
pressed  and  exalted.  There  is  no  reason  to  be 
ashamed  of  such  discords,  for  consistency  of 
temper  can  hardly  be  reckoned  a  human  virtue 
at  all.  At  one  extreme  it  is  a  prerogative  of 
the  gods,  at  the  other  a  limitation  of  the  brutes  ; 
so  that  if  ever  we  encounter  a  being  vdiose 
moods  are  never  in  conflict,  we  may  conclude 
that  he  is  either  supra-humanly  wise  or  infra- 
humanly  stupid — probably  the  latter.  Human 
nature  is  most  lovable  and  interesting  precisely 
at  those  points  where  its  moods  contradict  one 
another.  The  contradictions  are  a  source  of 
energy  ;  powers  that  move  the  world  come  out 


32 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


of  their  clash.  A  man  or  an  age  whose  temper 
never  varied  would  be  a  nonentity  in  the  world 
of  action. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  of  these  pheno¬ 
mena  is  that  strange  mingling  of  the  sense  of 
power  and  the  sense  of  powerlessness  which  arises 
in  most  of  us  as  we  view  the  course  of  current 
events.  On  the  one  hand,  we  see  ourselves  tak¬ 
ing  part  in  great  public  actions  with  immense 
resources  of  wealth,  science,  and  organisation  at 
our  disposal.  On  the  other,  we  seem  to  be 
in  the  grip  of  vast  forces  over  which  we  have 
no  control  whatsoever,  powerless  as  atoms  in 
a  whirling  vortex.  Our  minds  oscillate  be¬ 
tween  the  two  attitudes,  mastership  and  help¬ 
lessness. 

There  are  moments  when  the  sense  of  power 
rises  to  an  extraordinary  height  and  possesses 
whole  multitudes  of  men  at  once.  When,  for 
example,  a  new  idea,  like  that  of  a  League  of 
Nations,  first  gets  possession  of  our  minds  we 
are  like  men  intoxicated.  We  feel  that  a 
magic  sword  has  been  placed  in  our  hands, 
and  it  needs  only  that  we  lay  about  us  with 
vigour  to  bring  a  whole  world  of  wrong  and 
error  tumbling  down.  Many  examples  might 


A  PREVALENT  INCONSISTENCY 


33 


be  given  of  men  whom  the  advent  of  new  ideas 
has  thus  intoxicated  with  the  sense  of  power 
— the  French  revolutionists,  the  positivists,  the 
Malthusians,  the  Darwinians,  the  mid- Victorian 
radicals,  the  scientific  materialists,  the  fol¬ 
lowers  of  Henry  George,  the  early  socialists. 
The  Bolsheviks  provide  a  contemporary 
example.  They,  too,  are  out  to  move  moun¬ 
tains.  We  call  them  fools  and  madmen  ;  and 
so  they  may  be  ;  but  are  there  no  ideas  of 
our  own  to  which,  at  one  time  or  another,  we 
have  attributed  an  equal  measure  of  wonder¬ 
working  power  ? 

This  mood  of  masterful  confidence  is  our 
public  attitude — the  side  of  our  minds  we  show 
to  one  another.  We  find  it  in  the  speeches 
of  statesmen  ;  in  the  programmes  of  political 
parties  and  schools ;  in  propaganda  of  all 
kinds  ;  in  the  literature  of  social  reconstruc¬ 
tion.  All  these  assume  that  we  can  mould  the 
world  to  our  will. 

An  expression  that  came  into  prominence 
during  the  war  curiously  reflects  these  feelings. 
It  is  the  phrase  44  world-dominion.”  The  idea 
of  world-dominion  has  many  forms,  and  we  are 

unjust  to  the  Prussian  militarists  in  treating 

3 


34 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


them  as  its  solitary  exponents.  We  are  all 
addicted  to  the  notion  that  the  world  can  be 
dominated.  Indeed,  we  are  all  trying  to  get  it 
dominated  by  our  own  ideas  of  what  is  good 
for  it.  World-dominion  has  been  claimed  at 
various  times  for  various  things — for  religion 
(or  for  some  particular  doctrine  of  religion), 
for  philosophy  (as  in  Plato),  for  the  Goddess 
of  Reason,  for  science,  for  socialistic  ideals,  for 
Labour.  And  always  the  claim  has  been  made 
by  men  who,  from  one  cause  or  another,  were 
exalted  for  the  moment  by  their  sense  of 
power.  Some  men  are  thus  exalted  always. 
All  men  are  thus  exalted  sometimes.  It  is 
a  frame  of  mind  which  craves  publicity  and 
usually  issues  in  a  programme  of  world- 
dominion,  either  of  this  kind  or  of  that. 
Such  programmes  are  plentiful  at  the  present 
moment,  and  they  have  more  in  common  with 
one  another  than  appears  at  first  sight.  The 
League  of  Nations,  for  example,  is  obviously 
a  scheme  of  world-dominion.  So,  too,  when 
war  broke  out  in  Heaven,  as  narrated  in 
Milton’s  Paradise  Lost ,  the  belligerents  were 
agreed  on  the  general  necessity  of  world- 
dominion.  They  differed  as  to  the  principle 


A  PREVALENT  INCONSISTENCY 


35 


of  domination  and  fought  to  settle  the 
question. 

The  idea  of  world-dominion,  now  prevalent 
everywhere  in  one  or  other  of  its  many  forms, 
seems  to  indicate  that  we  are  masters  of  the 
world  —  a  view  of  ourselves  which  implies  a 
sense  of  enormous  power.  This,  however,  is 
only  the  public  aspect  of  our  mentality.  In 
every  age,  certainly  in  our  own,  there  is  a  side 
of  human  life  from  which  reporters  are  excluded. 
It  is  the  existence  of  this  unreported  side  which 
makes  history  difficult  to  write,  and  often  un¬ 
trustworthy  when  written.  The  sense  of  power¬ 
lessness  belongs  to  it.  When  a  man  believes 
that  he  is  captain  of  his  soul,  or  a  ruler  of 
other  men’s  destinies,  he  can  hardly  keep  his 
feelings  to  himself ;  but  when  misgivings  assail 
him  and  he  feels  as  though  the  bottom  were 
dropping  out  of  his  world,  he  will  say  as  little 
as  possible  about  his  state  of  mind,  both  in  the 
public  interest  and  in  his  own. 

I  think,  therefore,  that  we  should  be  wrong 
in  concluding  that  the  sense  of  powerlessness  is 
non-existent  because  so  little  of  it  gets  reported 
in  books,  in  public  speeches,  in  documents  of  one 
kind  or  another.  The  future  historian  will  mis- 


36 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


represent  the  men  of  to-day  if  he  describes  them 
as  cocksure.  He  will  misrepresent  them  by 
telling  only  half  of  the  truth.  They  are  cock¬ 
sure  ;  but  woven  in  with  all  this  self-confidence 
there  is  a  strain  of  profound  misgiving.  For 
the  evidence  of  this  we  must  look  to  the  un¬ 
reported  side  of  human  life — the  conversations 
of  statesmen  after  dinner,  the  confessions  of 
intimate  friends,  the  talk  of  the  club  and  the 
railway  carriage,  the  outcries  of  imaginative 
men  who  lie  awake  at  night — things  which, 
from  the  nature  of  the  case,  are  not  intended 
for  publication. 

These  two  strains,  the  sense  of  power  and 
the  sense  of  powerlessness,  unquestionably  co¬ 
exist,  the  one  public,  the  other  private.  The 
one  talks  proudly  of  science,  and  persuades  us 
that  with  science  at  our  elbow  we  can  move 
mountains  ;  the  other  reminds  us  that  science 
has  got  out  of  hand  and  become  an  implement 
for  the  self-destruction  of  mankind.  The  one 
points  to  the  miracles  of  effort  and  organisation 
which  nations  can  accomplish  when  inspired 
by  a  unitary  motive  ;  the  other  replies  that  a 
unitary  motive  may  play  all  kinds  of  diabolical 
tricks.  The  one  proclaims  that  we  are  partners 


A  PREVALENT  INCONSISTENCY 


37 


in  mighty  actions  directed  by  the  intelligent  pur¬ 
pose  of  the  common  mind  ;  the  other  answers 
that  these  mighty  actions  are  forced  upon  us  by 
circumstances  over  which  we  have  no  control ; 
that  the  world  is  full  of  violent,  unpredictable, 
explosive  forces  ;  that  we  are  in  the  grip  of 
elemental  powers  ;  that  we  are  like  men  who 
eat  and  drink  while  an  earthquake  is  rocking 
the  house.  The  two  views  are  interwoven  in 
the  consciousness  of  all  of  us. 

If  one  were  asked  to  name  off-hand  the  out¬ 
standing  feature  of  our  present  political  life,  the 
answer  would  probably  be  44  the  growing  power 
of  the  masses  ” ;  and  there  is  an  obvious  sense 
in  which  the  answer  might  be  accepted  as  true. 
It  correctly  describes  the  fact  that  policy  is 
becoming  less  dependent  on  the  wills  of  a  few 
and  more  susceptible  to  forces  which  originate 
with  the  masses  of  the  people.  But  if  it  be 
offered  as  an  account  of  our  political  psy¬ 
chology,  as  meaning  that  the  average  citizen  is 
conscious  of  growing  power  as  a  political  unit, 
it  is  the  reverse  of  true.  In  the  consciousness 
of  the  citizen  it  is  the  sense  of  powerlessness 
and  not  the  sense  of  power  which  for  the  moment 
has  the  ascendancy. 


38 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


There  is  a  widespread  feeling  at  work  that 
the  human  world  of  to-day,  the  world  with 
which  high  politics  are  concerned,  has  grown  too 
big  to  be  manageable  by  any  existing  methods 
of  political  control ;  that  neither  representative 
government  nor  government  of  any  other  type 
is  competent  to  deal  with  the  immense  and 
incalculable  forces  of  which  modern  com¬ 
munities  are  the  seat.  This  feeling,  which  is 
only  just  beginning  to  reach  the  stage  of  an 
articulate  idea,  is  a  consequence,  unforeseen  by 
early  political  thinkers,  of  the  enormous  in¬ 
crease  of  mass  which  has  taken  place  in  the 
great  empires  of  the  world.  Needless  to  say, 
the  late  war  gave  a  new  significance  to  these 
thoughts. 

Whatever  the  true  causes  of  the  war  may 
have  been,  the  peoples  of  Europe  know  very 
well  that  it  was  none  of  their  doing,  and  this 
has  greatly  deepened  the  feeling  of  helpless¬ 
ness,  the  sense  that  they  are  at  the  mercy  of 
elemental  powers.  It  is  a  complicated  state 
of  mind,  and  full  of  strange  possibilities  for  the 
future  history  of  the  world.  One  might  expect 
that  a  man  would  gain  a  new  sense  of  power  in 
remembering  that  he  is  an  active  member  of 


A  PREVALENT  INCONSISTENCY 


39 


a  community  of  fifty  or  a  hundred  million  souls. 
Just  now  it  serves  rather  to  remind  him  of  his 
powerlessness.  What  can  he  do  as  a  mere  unit 
in  a  totality  so  enormous  ?  He  seems  to  him¬ 
self  an  insignificant  atom,  impotent  to  affect 
the  destinies  of  the  State  one  way  or  another. 

Already  signs  begin  to  appear  that  this  sense 
of  powerlessness  is  causing  a  deep  unrest 
among  the  more  reflective  elements  of  the 
community.  The  advance  of  democracy  is 
gradually  revealing  a  new  and  unwelcome 
version  of  the  law  of  diminishing  returns.  It 
is  obvious,  for  example,  that  when  the  elec¬ 
torate  of  a  nation  is  doubled,  as  it  has  recently 
been  in  this  country,  the  moral  significance  of 
the  individual  citizen  is  correspondingly  reduced. 
As  the  mass  to  be  moved  increases  in  magnitude 
and  complexity,  his  own  power  to  move  it,  his 
personal  influence  on  the  direction  of  its  move¬ 
ment,  diminishes.  He  becomes  lost  in  the 
crowd,  and  whatever  wisdom  or  guidance  he 
has  to  contribute,  or  thinks  he  has,  is  drowned 
in  the  babel  of  voices  which  mingle  their  cries 
with  his.  At  this  point  a  sharp  antinomy 
breaks  out  between  the  tendencies  of  our  social 
culture  on  the  one  side  and  the  tendencies  of 


40 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


our  political  civilisation  on  the  other.  Social 
culture  is  aiming  everywhere  at  the  production 
of  more  highly  developed  individuals  ;  at  the 
same  time  political  civilisation  is  massing  these 
individuals  into  larger  and  larger  totalities,  in 
which  the  significance  of  each,  as  an  acting 
unit,  continually  falls.  We  have  to  reckon 
therefore  with  a  rising  consciousness  of  his 
own  value  in  the  individual,  and  with  a  falling 
value  of  his  individuality  in  the  political 
mechanism.  As  the  masses  which  include  him 
grow  larger  they  move  more  irresistibly,  per¬ 
haps  more  blindly ;  at  the  same  time  the 
individual,  awakened  by  the  influence  of  culture, 
becomes  more  conscious  of  the  momentum 
which  is  sweeping  him  off  his  feet,  and  of  his 
own  impotence  to  alter  its  course,  even  though 
it  seems  to  him  to  be  heading  for  destruction. 
It  may  be  that  in  the  details  of  his  life  the  laws 
are  abolishing  restrictions  which  hamper  his 
liberty  of  action,  and  in  that  sense  he  may  feel 
himself  becoming  a  freer  man ;  but  in  the 
general  sweep  of  events  that  determine  the 
fortunes  of  civilisation  he  is  becoming  more 
and  more  of  a  nonentity,  more  and  more  at  the 
mercy  of  mass  movements  which  are  carrying 


A  PREVALENT  INCONSISTENCY 


•  41 


him  and  his  neighbours  he  knows  not  whither. 
How  often  in  recent  years  have  good  men,  as 
they  watched  the  play  of  forces,  apparently 
blind,  which  have  been  making  havoc  of 
European  civilisation,  been  struck  by  the  bitter 
thought  that  in  the  determination  of  these 
things  they  counted  for  nothing  at  all.  Caught 
in  the  grip  of  these  mighty  currents,  what  can 
the  “  free  individual  ”  do  but  wring  his  hands 
in  the  agony  of  his  helplessness  ? 

Between  a  political  civilisation  which  swallows 
up  the  freedom  of  the  individual  in  the  momen¬ 
tum  of  the  mass,  and  a  culture  which  develops 
his  personal  initiative  and  teaches  him  the 
value  of  it,  there  can  be  no  peace.  The  prin¬ 
ciple  at  work  in  the  one  is  flatly  opposed  to  the 
principle  at  work  in  the  other,  and  the  experi¬ 
ences  of  the  last  nine  years  have  greatly 
sharpened  their  opposition.  Sooner  or  later 
democracy  must  effect  their  reconciliation,  or 
perish  in  the  alternative. 


THE  RULE  OF  IDEAS: 

A  WAR-TIME  MISGIVING1 

We  have  been  told,  and  never  more  frequently 
than  during  the  years  of  war,  that  ideas  rule 
the  world  ;  and  the  saying  is  often  repeated 
with  a  seraphic  air,  as  though  it  were  a  kind  of 
prelude  to  the  millennium.  I  am  not  the  least 
concerned  to  dispute  the  proposition  as  a 
respectable  platitude  ;  but  I  do  contend  that 
seraphic  airs  are  inappropriate  to  the  utter¬ 
ance  of  it.  For  it  is  a  truth  that  cuts  both 
ways.  Ideas  are  of  all  sorts,  good  and  bad, 
true  and  false.  Obviously  the  advantage  of 
being  ruled  by  them  depends  on  which  kind 
happens  to  be  ruling  you.  Hell  is  ruled  by 
ideas  no  less  than  heaven. 

It  is  a  common  mistake  to  suppose  that 
those  communities  are  most  to  be  admired 
where  ideas  have  the  greatest  power.  In  that 

1  Land  and  Water,  August  1917. 

42 


THE  RULE  OF  IDEAS 


43 


case,  Germany  would  be  the  most  admirable 
nation  on  earth  ;  for  there  is  no  country  where 
ideas  are  so  powerful.  This  should  be  enough 
to  prove  that  it  is  not  always  the  best  ideas 
which  exercise  the  greatest  power.  The  worst 
may  be  in  the  ascendant,  or  anything  between 
the  best  and  the  worst.  For  example,  ideas 
44  with  money  in  them,”  which  may  be  neither 
the  worst  nor  the  best,  may  dominate  an  epoch 
or  a  whole  civilisation ;  while,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  ideas  on  which  manhood  and  character  are 
founded  are  often  little  more  than  ineffectual 
.  ghosts,  present  everywhere  but  dominant 
nowhere. 

Another  mistake  is  to  suppose  that  those 
ideas  are  the  most  powerful  which  are  being 
most  talked  about.  This,  I  believe,  is  seldom 
the  fact.  A  candid  reading  of  history  suggests 
that  in  all  ages  of  the  world  the  most  power¬ 
ful  ideas  are  precisely  those  that  are  being 
least  talked  about.  The  more  oratory  the 
less  earnestness ;  the  more  eloquence  the  less 
action.  For  example,  scientific  ideas  are,  on 
the  whole,  far  less  talked  about  than  moral 
ideas ;  yet,  on  the  whole,  scientific  ideas 
produce  more  earnestness  and  more  action. 


44 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


A  scientific  idea  soon  gives  birth  to  a  machine, 
and  the  whole  structure  of  society  may  be 
swiftly  changed  in  consequence — as  happened 
when  the  steam-engine  was  invented,  and  as 
will  happen  now  that  the  aeroplane  has  been 
invented.  But  it  takes  a  long  time  for  a 
moral  idea  to  translate  itself  into  a  civilisa¬ 
tion,  into  a  character,  or  into  a  manner  of 
life. 

The  fate  of  scientific  ideas  in  this  respect  is 
very  different  from  that  of  moral  ideas.  The 
scientific  idea  turns  itself  into  a  plan  of  action, 
and  that  with  the  least  possible  delay.  The 
moral  idea  is  apt  to  become  a  literary  or  pul¬ 
pit  property,  material  for  copy,  stock-in-trade 
for  novelists,  playwrights,  agitators,  preachers, 
pamphleteers,  and  lecturers.  There  is,  of  course, 
a  literature  of  steam-engines  and  aeroplanes, 
but  its  bulk  is  nothing  compared  with  the  litera¬ 
ture,  say,  of  Christianity.  Yet  we  are  more  in 
earnest  about  steam  -  engines  and  aeroplanes 
than  we  are  about  Christianity.  At  all  events, 
it  would  be  no  hard  thing  to  draw  up  a  long  list 
of  ideas,  good  ideas,  great  ideas,  true  ideas, 
which  have  been  in  existence  for  long  ages, 
which  have  produced  literatures  and  been  pro- 


THE  RULE  OF  IDEAS 


45 


digiously  talked  about,  but  which  have  never 
yet  succeeded  in  ruling  the  world  nor  any 
considerable  fraction  of  it.  We  have  need, 
therefore,  to  be  cautious  about  the  inferences 
we  draw  from  the  general  proposition  that 
ideas  rule  the  world. 

The  need  for  this  caution  is  especially  great 
at  the  present  moment.1  Ideas  were  never 
more  plentiful  than  now.  A  multitude  of  new 
ones  has  come  to  life,  many  old  ones  have 
been  revived,  and  the  new  ones  combining  with 
the  old  have  broken  out  into  an  efflorescence 
like  that  of  the  apple-trees  in  spring.  An 
enormous  number  of  social  improvements  might 
easily  be  effected  by  the  application  of  these 
ideas,  or  even  by  the  application  of  a  little 
common  sense. 

But  will  they  be  applied  ?  Are  we  in 
earnest  ?  Will  a  world  which  has  stopped  its 
ears  to  Moses  and  the  Prophets  pay  more 
attention  to  their  successors  ?  The  propa¬ 
ganda  of  reconstruction  is  no  doubt  a  reassur¬ 
ing  thing  so  far  as  it  goes.  But  how  far 
does  it  go  ?  The  present  would  not  be  the 

1  August  1917.  About  that  time  the  “  reconstruction  ” 
fever  was  at  its  height. 


46 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


first  instance  of  an  intellectual  and  moral 
awakening  which  has  produced  propaganda 
but  little  else.  There  is  always  the  danger 
that  an  outburst  of  propaganda  may  deceive 
mankind  into  the  comfortable  belief  that  some¬ 
thing  wonderful  is  going  to  happen  of  its  own 
accord,  that  great  changes  will  follow  auto¬ 
matically — because,  it  is  thought,  good  ideas 
have  a  Divine  Right  to  get  themselves  fulfilled, 
so  that,  having  cast  them  on  the  waters,  we 
may  leave  the  Divine  Right  that  is  in  them  to 
do  the  rest,  and  go  to  lunch  or  go  to  sleep  as 
the  occasion  prompts. 

There  is  also  a  danger  in  the  fact  that  most 
of  the  problems  we  are  discussing  are,  from  the 
intellectual  point  of  view,  so  fascinating,  so 
intensely  provocative  of  argument,  so  full  of 
tempting  opportunities  for  that  war  of  minds 
which  provides  us  with  wholesome  gymnastic, 
and  which  we  all  love  so  much.  Under  these 
circumstances  discussion  often  gathers  round 
itself  a  secondary  importance  of  its  own,  in 
which  the  primary  importance,  perhaps  the 
tragic  importance,  of  the  thing  we  are  discuss¬ 
ing  is  submerged  and  lost  sight  of.  This  also  has 
actually  happened  again  and  again.  The  re- 


THE  RULE  OF  IDEAS 


47 


constructions  proposed  have  ended  in  verbiage, 
in  enormous  accumulations  of  waste-paper,  in 
volumes  which  gather  the  dust  and  are  not 
taken  down  from  the  shelf  once  in  a  genera¬ 
tion. 

When  the  matter  is  considered  in  this  light 
we  get  a  new  reading  of  the  problem  of  re¬ 
construction.  At  first  sight  the  problem  appears 
to  consist  in  finding  the  right  scheme,  or  the 
right  idea,  by  the  application  of  which  this  or 
that  is  to  be  mended.  The  importance  of  that 
I  do  not  belittle — nobody  in  his  senses  would 
dream  of  belittling  it ;  but  behind  it  lies  the 
far  greater  problem  of  finding  the  'power  to 
carry  out  the  scheme  you  have  devised,  to  give 
effect  to  the  idea  you  have  propounded.  I  am 
not  referring  to  political  power  as  it  is  repre¬ 
sented  by  masses  of  voters,  by  measures  passed 
into  law,  by  armies,  and  by  policemen.  I  mean 
moral  power,  as  it  is  represented  by  the  steadi¬ 
ness  of  the  public  in  the  pursuit  of  its  aims, 
by  continuity  of  effort,  by  belief  in  principles, 
by  mutual  loyalty,  by  strict  adhesion  both  to 
the  form  and  the  spirit  of  a  pledge,  and  by  the 
refusal  to  be  led  away  by  cant.  This  is  the  kind 
of  power  you  want,  and  without  which  your 


48 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


scheme  of  reconstruction  will  never  be  carried 
out.  It  is  one  thing  to  devise  an  excellent 
arrangement  and  secure  the  consent  of  the 
parties  involved ;  it  is  quite  another  thing  to 
secure  their  continued  loyalty  to  the  consent 
they  have  given.  And  it  is  the  last  on  which 
the  success  of  your  scheme  depends.  No 
scheme  of  betterment  has  ever  yet  been  devised 
by  the  wit  of  man  which  was  not  susceptible  of 
capture  by  sinister  interests,  or  exposed  to  ruin 
by  the  disloyalty  or  the  forgetfulness  of  the 
parties  concerned  in  it. 

Take,  for  example,  the  League  of  Peace, 
one  of  the  boldest  and  most  far-reaching  of 
the  “reconstructions”  now  before  mankind. 
Power,  we  are  told,  is  to  be  at  the  disposal  of 
the  League.  But  what  kind  of  power  ?  Most 
assuredly  it  must  be  moral  power  or  the  League 
will  come  to  grief.  It  must  consist,  ultimately, 
in  the  continued  loyalty  of  the  nations  to  the 
objects  for  which  the  League  was  founded  ; 
in  the  spirit  of  good-fellowship  which  animates 
their  relations ;  in  mutual  respect ;  in  a 
readiness  to  take  a  generous  view  of  each 
other’s  merits  and  each  other’s  claims  ;  and  it 
must  have  this  character  not  at  the  start 


THE  RULE  OF  IDEAS 


49 


alone,  but  all  through  and  continuously.  In  the 
absence  of  these  conditions  the  physical  power 
at  the  disposal  of  the  League,  however  great  it 
might  be,  and  all  the  more  in  proportion  to  its 
magnitude,  would  not  be  a  guarantee  of  safety, 
but  a  new  source  of  peril.  It  would  tempt 
capture  by  sinister  interests ;  it  would  dis¬ 
integrate  through  internal  treachery;  it  would 
be  at  the  mercy  and  ultimately  become  the 
tool  of  the  most  astute  and  unscrupulous 
member  of  the  League.  If  peace  were  to  be 
guaranteed  to-morrow  by  a  compact  having 
behind  it  the  massed  armies  of  all  the  States 
in  the  world,  I  for  one  would  sleep  no  easier 
in  my  bed — unless  I  knew  that  behind  the 
armies  that  other  kind  of  power  was  at  work. 
On  the  contrary,  my  sleep  would  be  more 
uneasy  than  ever.  And  so  with  regard  to 
every  one  of  the  reconstructions,  great  and 
small,  now  before  the  public.  There  is  not 
one  of  them  that  is  worth  the  paper  on 
which  it  is  written  unless  we  are  able  to 
count  on  moral  power,  on  loyalty,  to  give  it 
effect. 

The  question  of  moral  power  being  then  the 

hinge  of  the  whole  problem,  can  we  form  any 

4 


50 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


conception  of  the  social  conditions  in  which 
good  ideas  are  least  likely  to  be  wasted  and  most 
likely  to  succeed  ?  I  think  we  can. 

The  likelihood  that  a  good  idea  will  take  root 
and  fructify  as  a  social  force  is  ultimately 
dependent  on  the  good  temper  of  the  community 
to  which  it  is  addressed.  In  human  society, 
improvement  that  is  worth  the  name  is  never 
effected  by  one  set  of  people  forcing  their  ideas 
down  the  throats  of  another  set.  All  improve¬ 
ment  takes  place  by  consent ,  by  men  seeing 
eye  to  eye,  believing  in  common  and  acting 
together  in  good  faith  and  mutual  loyalty  for 
the  given  end.  This  loyal  and  continuous 
consent  can  never  be  obtained,  on  a  scale  large 
enough  to  be  effective,  except  in  communities 
whose  members,  as  human  beings,  are  on  good 
terms  with  one  another,  respect  one  another, 
trust  one  another,  believe  in  each  other’s  good 
intentions,  and  take  a  generous  view  of  each 
other’s  merits  and  demerits. 

Imagine  the  opposite  conditions — and  they 
are  not  difficult  to  imagine,  for  they  existed  in 
England  before  the  war  and  are  by  no  means 
non-existent  even  now — and  who  can  doubt 
that  the  best  idea  that  ever  issued  from  the 


THE  RULE  OF  IDEAS 


51 


mind  of  man,  the  wisest  reform  ever  projected, 
will  inevitably  come  to  grief ;  it  will  split  on 
the  rock  of  mutual  dislike,  suspicion,  animosity 
— in  a  word,  on  the  rock  of  bad  temper.  There 
is  no  power  in  the  State  that  can  prevent  this, 
for  where  the  spirit  of  distrust  is  rampant,  the 
State  itself  will  be  distrusted  and  its  best 
efforts  will  be  met  by  the  cry  that  it  has  been 
captured  by  an  enemy.  In  foreign  politics 
every  proposal  made  by  one  Government  will 
be  interpreted  as  a  dodge,  or  “  a  move  in  the 
game,”  by  the  others.  This  points  to  the  one 
essential  condition  which  will  have  to  be  ful¬ 
filled  before  any  extensive  improvement  or 
“  reconstruction  ”  can  be  hoped  for.  There 
must  be  an  immense  increase  of  social 
goodwill,  of  the  spirit  of  good-fellowship 
between  nations,  classes,  and  individuals — an 
immense  increase  beyond  the  pre-war  level,  and 
of  course  beyond  the  present  level. 

We  are  about  to  enter  upon  one  of  the 
difficult  periods  of  human  history,  in  which 
nothing  but  good  temper  can  save  us  from 
confusion  such  as  the  world  has  never 
seen.  If  we  consider  the  difficulties  one  by 
one  instead  of  treating  them  in  general  terms, 


52 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


we  shall  find  that  most  of  them  are  of  the  very 
kind  which  is  certain,  in  an  evil  atmosphere,  to 
give  rise  to  jealousies  and  suspicions,  to  set 
nation  against  nation,  class  against  class,  and 
man  against  man. 

Great  sacrifices  will  have  to  be  borne.  We 
shall  have  not  only  to  exert  ourselves  but  to 
exert  ourselves  together ;  friendly  co-operation 
will  be  the  first  law,  and  imperative  at  every 
point ;  the  weak  not  shrinking  from  so  much 
of  the  burden  as  they  are  able  to  bear,  and  the 
strong  willingly  accepting  more  than  the  share 
which  would  fall  to  them  on  a  mere  counting 
of  heads.  We  have  only  to  consider  what  will 
be  involved  in  the  single  problem  of  finding 
year  by  year  the  interest  on  a  national  debt  of 
thousands  of  millions.  The  one  condition  on 
which  we  can  pay  our  debts  is  that  we  keep 
our  tempers,  get  rid  of  our  nastiness  to  one 
another,  and  act  like  reasonable  beings.  The 
same  may  be  said  in  regard  to  every  other 
problem  we  shall  have  to  meet.  Evil  is  the 
augury  which  comes  in  from  time  to  time  of 
classes,  groups,  and  parties  who  are  only 
waiting  to  “  go  for  ”  their  old  enemies  with 
fresh  vigour  and  animosity.  If  that  spirit 


THE  RULE  OF  IDEAS 


53 


prevails,  the  prospects  of  reconstruction — no 
matter  of  what  form — are  black  indeed. 

It  would  be  a  good  thing  if  the  plea  for  good 
temper,  for  the  spirit  of  good-fellowship,  for 
social  goodwill  in  every  form,  could  be  made  a 
tail-piece,  or  put  into  the  forefront,  of  every 
scheme  for  reconstruction.  It  should  be  clearly 
understood  that  the  biggest  tax  we  shall 
have  to  pay  will  be  the  tax  on  our  social 
temper,  which  is  going  to  be  strained  to 
the  uttermost.  Labour  and  Capital  should 
give  the  matter  their  earnest  attention.  The 
Trades  Unions,  the  Labour  Federations,  should 
take  it  up,  and  they  should  do  so  in  their  own 
interest  as  well  as  in  that  of  the  public,  for  it 
is  certain  that  not  one  of  the  objects  which 
Labour  is  now  aiming  at  is  even  remotely 
attainable  unless  supported  by  the  goodwill 
and  hearty  consent  of  the  whole  community. 
The  women  should  take  it  up — here  indeed  is 
a  chance  for  them  to  introduce  something  that 
is  both  novel  and  essential  into  political  life. 
The  Churches  should  take  it  up. 

If  we  fail  at  this  point,  I  predict  that  the 
multitude  of  good  ideas  which  the  war  has 
called  into  being  will  share  the  fate  of  many 


54 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


better  ideas  with  which  mankind  has  been 
familiar  for  centuries.  They  will  not  rule  the 
world.  They  will  end  their  career  as  themes 
for  eloquence,  and  reconstruction  will  have  to 
be  content  with  the  literature  it  has  produced. 
A  poor  result ! 


THE  POLITICAL  OBSESSION  AND 
THE  LEAGUE  OF  NATIONS 

An  outstanding  characteristic  of  the  times,  in 
which  the  future  historian  will  find  much  food 
for  thought,  is  the  enormous  exaggeration  of 
the  importance  of  politics.  If  politics  meant 
in  modern  practice  what  they  meant  to  Plato, 
Aristotle,  or  Dante,  it  would  be  impossible  to 
exaggerate  their  importance.  But,  unfortun¬ 
ately,  they  have  come  to  mean  something  else. 

Because  we  exaggerate  the  importance  of 
politics,  we  overlook,  belittle,  and  sometimes 
even  despise  the  importance  of  other  things 
—  such  as  art,  poetry,  literature,  science, 
culture,  philosophy,  morals,  religion.  All  these 
things,  which  represent  the  major  interests  of 
mankind,  and  are  the  ultimate  ground  of  unity 
among  nations ,  suffer  grievously  from  the  all- 
devouring  claims  of  the  popular  idol.  Like  a 


56 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


tree  with  voracious  roots  which  suck  the  nature 
out  of  the  surrounding  soil,  politics  deprive 
these  major  interests  of  the  abundant  nourish¬ 
ment  they  require,  and  leave  them  half -grown, 
stunted,  and  sickly.  There  are  several  trees  of 
that  kind  in  the  public  garden,  but  politics  is 
the  hungriest  of  them  all. 

Politics,  as  we  practise  them,  attack  human 
life  from  the  mechanical  end  and  treat  it  as  a 
problem  in  mechanism.  The  devotee  of  this 
method  creates  4 4  machinery,”  national  or  in¬ 
ternational  as  the  case  may  be,  and  then  trusts 
to  luck  or  the  next  election — pretty  much  the 
same  thing — to  produce  the  men  who  can  be 
trusted  to  work  it.  He  is  indifferent  to  psy¬ 
chology,  and  takes  little  account  of  the  in¬ 
genuities  of  the  human  mind,  though  these  can 
turn  his  44  machinery  ”  to  almost  any  purpose 
they  please.  He  is  untroubled  by  the  presence 
in  the  world  of  a  large  class  of  expert  machinery 
thieves,  whose  art  consists  in  hypnotising  the 
public  and  then  capturing  the  apparatus  of 
liberty  under  the  nose  of  its  creators — as,  for 
example,  when  the  machinery  of  Prohibition 
in  the  United  States  is  adroitly  seized  by 
whisky-distillers,  bootleggers,  and  other  nefari- 


THE  POLITICAL  OBSESSION 


57 


ous  persons  to  make  enormous  fortunes  for 
themselves  and  to  corrupt  the  morals  of  great 
cities. 

All  this  comes  from  the  enormous  exaggera¬ 
tion  of  the  importance  of  politics,  which  is 
itself  a  kind  of  hypnosis.  A  public  which 
retained  its  sense  of  proportion  and  was 
wide  -  awake  to  the  difference  between  the 
major  and  the  minor  interests  of  human  life 
would  never  suffer  itself  to  be  practised 
upon  in  this  way.  It  would  attack  its 
problems  from  the  human  end ;  that  is  to 
say,  it  would  begin  by  finding  the  right  men 
to  do  its  work  and  then  provide  them  with 
machinery  which  the  wrong  men  would  not  so 
easily  capture.  In  a  word,  it  would  return  to 
the  politics  of  Plato. 

To  break  this  hypnosis,  to  wean  men  from 
this  fanatical  idolatry,  is  one  of  the  hardest 
and  perhaps  the  most  thankless  tasks  that  any 
writer  or  thinker  could  undertake  at  the  present 
moment.  One  is  contending  not  only  against 
principalities  and  powers,  but  against  a  far 
more  formidable  opponent — to  wit,  a  fixed 
idea,  an  obsession,  a  cult,  a  habit  of  mind  which 
has  held  the  field  for  generations.  And  yet 


58 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


who  can  doubt  that  “  the  change  of  heart  ” 
which  we  are  told,  with  wearisome  reiteration, 
is  the  first  condition  of  a  renovated  world,  of 
an  effective  League  of  Nations,  and  which  the 
war  was  so  confidently  expected  to  bring  about 
but  has  not  brought  about,  consists  precisely 
in  our  shaking  off  this  blind  faith  in  mechanism 
and  learning  to  attack  our  problems  from  the 
human  end  ?  Machinery  is  unquestionably 
important,  and  will  remain  so  to  the  end  of 
the  chapter.  It  is  an  extension  of  the  per¬ 
sonality  of  man.  But  the  world  will  not 
always  be  content  to  regard  the  machinery 
which  extends  personality  as  more  important 
than  the  personality  it  extends.  In  the  politics 
of  Plato  the  two  things  are  placed  in  their 
right  order.  We  reverse  it. 

There  is  the  widespread  belief  that  whatever 
most  needs  doing  in  this  world  must  be 
done  by  “the  Government”;  and  that 
whatever  is  not  done  that  needs  doing 
“the  Government”  is  to  be  blamed  for  not 
doing  it.  General  elections  are  conducted  on 
that  basis  ;  it  is  the  assumption  of  half  the 
speeches  in  Parliament  and  the  daily  susten¬ 
ance  of  the  newspaper  Press,  from  the  most 


THE  POLITICAL  OBSESSION 


59 


conservative  to  the  most  revolutionary.  An 
error  more  fatal  never  flourished. 

Again,  in  popular  thought  and  speech  the 
life  of  a  people  is  invariably  identified  with  its 
political  life — the  two  terms  are  used  synony¬ 
mously.  Yet  the  life  of  a  people  is  not 
primarily  political,  and  only  becomes  so  when 
the  major  interests  of  mankind  have  fallen 
into  neglect.  It  may  be  religious,  as  in  parts 
of  the  East.  It  may  be  artistic,  as  in  ancient 
Athens,  in  mediaeval  Italy,  in  Japan  before 
she  came  under  European  influence.  It  might 
even  become  scientific  and  fulfil  the  dream  of 
Comte,  Herbert  Spencer,  the  mid- Victorian 
Radicals,  and  Mr  Wells.  Or  lastly — and  the 
point  would  be  worth  enlarging  upon — the  life 
of  a  people  might  become  “  political  ”  in  the 
sense  given  to  the  word  by  Plato — which 
would  be  the  greatest  change  of  all. 

Involved  in  this,  and  indeed  the  most 
mischievous  part  of  it,  is  the  identification 
of  public  men  with  political  men ,  and  of 
public  leaders  with  political  leaders.  The 
front  seats  of  our  world  are  unquestionably 
for  politicians,  and  are  “  reserved  ”  accordingly. 
Behind  them  in  greater  or  less  obscurity 


60 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


come  the  men  of  science,  of  art,  of  letters, 
of  religion,  and  the  rest,  who  may  indeed  urge 
their  wisdom  on  the  front  row  but  are  seldom 
found  there.  The  public  has  no  conception  of 
national  leadership  save  in  the  political  variety, 
and  is  astonished,  almost  affronted,  by  the 
suggestion  that  it  might  be  led  by  any  other. 
Not  that  public  leadership  is  formally  closed 
to  the  man  of  genius,  the  man  of  exceptional 
wisdom,  the  man  anointed  with  the  oil  of 
joy  and  gladness  above  his  fellows.  He  may 
indeed  “  arrive,”  but  only  on  conditions. 
The  conditions  are  that  he  must  become  a 
politician,  graduate  in  the  school  of  electioneer¬ 
ing,  enter  Parliament,  seek  office,  and  so  work 
his  way  to  the  front  until  at  last  he  is  acknow¬ 
ledged  as  a  “  public  leader.”  Save  on  these 
conditions  the  best  he  can  hope  to  attain  is  the 
second  row — which  confers  the  right  to  criticise 
the  leaders  but  not  the  right  to  lead.  The  tale 
of  the  men  of  genius  who  have  accepted  these 
conditions  and  been  spoiled  by  them  would 
fill  a  large  volume.  The  tale  of  those  who  have 
refused  to  accept  them  would  fill  a  larger 
volume  still. 

And  what  shall  we  say  of  international 


THE  POLITICAL  OBSESSION 


61 


affairs  ?  Do  we  find  in  this  wider  field  any  signs 
that  the  fixed  idea  is  giving  way  ?  On  the  con¬ 
trary,  we  find  it  more  insistent,  more  obstinate 
than  ever.  International  life  is  conceived  in 
precisely  the  same  terms  as  44 public  life”  at 
home,  and  international  leadership  is  assigned 
to  precisely  the  same  class  of  persons,  who  have 
graduated  in  the  same  school  and  are  domi¬ 
nated  by  the  same  fixed  idea. 

44  What  is  the  League  of  Nations  ?  ”  asked 
Mr  Balfour,  as  reported  in  the  Times  of  February 
13,  1920.  44  The  League  of  Nations,”  he 

answered,  44  is  exactly  the  same  gentlemen  who 
sat  together  in  Paris  from  January  to  November 
1919,  exactly  the  same  gentlemen  called  by 
a  different  name — the  Prime  Ministers  of  the 
leading  countries.”  So  far  as  these  words 
throw  any  light  upon  the  matter,  the  main 
difference  between  national  and  international 
politics  would  appear  to  be  that  while  in  the 
former  you  have  only  one  Prime  Minister,  in 
the  latter  you  have  a  syndicate  of  them. 

Mr  Balfour’s  statement  is  unfortunately  true. 
But  it  will  convey  very  little  comfort  to  those 
who  believe,  as  some  of  these  44  Prime  Ministers  ” 
have  themselves  been  insisting,  that  the  success 


62 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


of  the  League  of  Nations  depends  on  “  a  change 
of  heart.”  Prime  Ministers  have  their  merits, 
but  when  changes  of  heart  are  demanded  they 
are  hardly  the  men  to  lead  the  world.  If  any 
Prime  Minister  in  Europe  were  to  change  his 
heart — M.  Poincare,  for  example — the  whole 
electioneering  edifice  of  his  party  would  go  to 
pieces,  and  he  would  be  turned  out  of  office. 
And  the  same  holds  true  of  Ministers  in 
general. 

The  League  of  Nations,  as  defined  by  Mr 
Balfour  in  terms  of  Prime  Ministers,  gives  the 
popular  idea  of  it,  as  essentially  an  affair  of 
government,  a  political  enterprise,  an  extended 
or  international  version  of  the  machinery  which 
each  nation  has  created  for  itself  by  setting  up 
law  and  order  within  its  own  borders,  to  be 
worked  on  the  international  scale  by  men  who 
have  been  accustomed  to  working  it  on  the 
national  scale.  A  League  which  was  not 
dominated  by  Prime  Ministers,  and  not  con¬ 
structed  in  terms  of  votes,  elections,  assemblies, 
legislatures,  law  courts,  and  police,  and  not 
manned  by  diplomatists,  Foreign  Office  experts, 
and  gentlemen  dependent  on  the  fortunes  of 
electioneering,  would  not  be  a  League  at  all. 


THE  POLITICAL  OBSESSION 


63 


Such  is  the  orthodox  faith.  It  betrays  the 
political  obsession  at  every  point. 

If  further  confirmation  is  needed,  we  have 
only  to  study  the  actual  constitution  of  the 
League  as  embodied  in  the  Covenant.  A 
sentence  is  enough  to  describe  its  nature.  It 
is  of  politicians,  by  politicians,  for  politicians  ; 
an  instrument  created  by  political  operators, 
and  which  none  but  political  operators  could 
control. 

But  is  it  not  possible  to  view  internationalism 
— I  use  the  word  in  a  sense  applicable  to  every 
believer  in  a  League  of  Nations — in  a  different 
light  ?  May  it  not  be  that  the  League  is  an 
opportunity,  given  at  the  moment  when  most 
needed,  for  breaking  away  into  a  new  atmo¬ 
sphere  altogether  ?  Instead  of  borrowing  our 
ideas  from  the  political  State,  and  reproducing 
the  methods  of  current  politics  with  all  their 
dangers,  and  actually  employing  the  very  men 
who  represent  our  combative  nationalism,  should 
we  not  rather  aim  at  a  new  model  of  community 
life,  founded  on  the  broadest  conceptions  of 
human  good  ?  And  might  we  not  reasonably 
expect  that  this  new  and  better  model,  set  up 
on  higher  ground,  would  in  course  of  time 


64 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


become  a  type  to  which  existing  governments 
and  the  men  who  control  them  would  gradually 
learn  to  conform  ?  In  short,  instead  of  the 
political  State  being  a  model  for  the  League  of 
Nations,  might  not  the  League  of  Nations  be¬ 
come  a  model  for  the  political  State  ? 

Some  of  us  have  long  thought  that  these 
things  are  possible.  The  League  of  Nations,  in 
our  view  of  it,  is  not  an  extended  version  of 
national  government;  it  is  not,  as  patriotism 
likes  to  think,  the  British  Empire  writ  large ; 
it  is  not  a  scheme  of  law,  order,  and  police 
blown  out  to  international  proportions.  It  is 
a  different  type  of  association,  demanding  new 
ideas,  new  habits  of  thought,  new  lines  of  action, 
and,  above  all,  new  men .  It  is  a  great  experi¬ 
ment  in  humanism,  requiring  for  its  service 
humanists  who  have  retained  their  humanism 
unwarped  by  electioneering  and  diplomacy. 
We  dream  of  the  League  as  an  instrument  for 
organising  the  nations  on  the  lines  of  the  things 
which  matter  most  in  human  life ,  to  be  guided 
by  men  who  have  proved  their  wisdom  in  the 
understanding  of  these  things.  We  think  that 
internationalism  has  much  higher  and  wider 
aims  than  repressive  measures  against  war, 


THE  POLITICAL  OBSESSION 


65 


and  that  it  is  only  by  making  these  greater 
aims  paramount  from  the  beginning  that  the 
nations  will  ever  learn  to  live  in  peace  with 
one  another. 

In  short,  the  League  we  dream  of  would  be 
independent  of  the  fortunes  of  political  persons, 
political  parties,  political  creeds,  and  instead  of 
tying  it  up  with  electioneering  interests,  and  in¬ 
viting  electioneers  to  control  it,  we  would  strike 
out  into  regions  that  are  less  exposed  to  the 
desolating  inroads  of  vote-catching  operations 
— regions  of  science,  knowledge,  culture,  eco¬ 
nomics,  finance,  industry,  education,  art,  beauty, 
joy.  In  these  things  we  draw  nearer  to  the 
realities  of  human  life,  upon  which  must  be 
laid  the  foundations  for  the  community  of 
mankind  if  such  a  consummation  is  ever  to 
come  into  being — as  we  greatly  hope,  but  are 
not,  as  yet,  assured  of. 


THE  DEGRADATION  OF 

POLICY 


In  times  not  long  ago,  when  Comte  and  Herbert 
Spencer  were  the  chief  stars  of  the  intellectual 
firmament,  the  question  uppermost  in  high 
controversy  was  whether  science  or  religion 
would  become  the  dominant  power  in  human 
affairs.  So  far  as  religion  was  concerned,  the 
question  seemed  even  then  to  have  settled 
itself.  Since  the  break-up  of  the  authority  of 
the  Church  in  the  sixteenth  century,  religion, 
whatever  power  it  might  retain  in  private  life, 
had  been  losing  ground  as  a  determining  factor 
in  high  politics.  Thus  the  way  was  open  for  a 
new  guiding  principle ;  it  was  clearly  demanded, 
and  the  question  was  as  to  the  competence  of 
science  to  play  the  part.  General  opinion  was 
favourable  to  its  claims.  Science  was  the  horse 
on  which  the  mid-Victorian  spirit  found  itself 
more  and  more  tempted  to  put  its  money,  of 


THE  DEGRADATION  OF  POLICY 


67 


which  there  was  great  abundance,  but  with¬ 
out  the  knowledge  of  what  to  do  with  it. 
Largely  through  the  influence  of  Spencer,  we 
were  entertained  with  the  dream  of  a  coming 
age  when  scientific  principles  and  knowledge 
would  regulate,  not  only  the  conduct  of  the 
individual  man,  but  the  conduct  of  States,  of 
Governments,  of  public  affairs.  A  number  of 
sciences  designed  for  that  end  came  into  being, 
of  which  political  economy  held  the  key. 
Bentham  constructed  a  science  of  law  ;  Mill 
followed  with  a  science  of  liberty ;  Walter 
Bagehot  wrote  The  Science  of  Politics ;  and 
meanwhile  Spencer  was  sketching  his  sociology 
as  the  coming  synthesis  of  them  all.  We 
began  to  look  forward  to  a  reign  of  sociologists  ; 
we  pictured  the  future  candidate  for  Parliament 
as  a  man  who  had  taken  “  honours  ”  in  socio¬ 
logy,  and  Parliament  itself  as  a  great  committee 
of  sociological  experts,  legislating  for  a  socio¬ 
logically  enlightened  public,  that  would  tolerate 
nothing  which  was  not  sociologically  sound. 

In  all  this,  of  course,  religion  had  hardly  a 
word  to  say  ;  but  the  public  had  long  been 
accustomed  to  that,  and  preferred,  on  the 
whole,  that  the  pretence  of  religion  should  be 


68 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


abandoned  in  a  region  where  everybody  knew 
it  had  ceased  to  have  effective  power.  On 
many  grounds  this  dream  of  the  coming  reign 
of  science  was  not  unattractive,  and  although 
it  might  appear  ignoble  when  compared  with 
the  Thirteenth  Chapter  of  First  Corinthians,  and 
although  it  drew  upon  itself  the  scorn  of  Ruskin 
and  many  a  lashing  sarcasm  from  Carlyle,  one 
is  still  tempted  to  say  of  it  that  a  worse  thing 
might  have  happened  to  the  world. 

Be  that  as  it  may,  the  scientific  millennium 
has  not  come  to  pass  ;  nor  at  the  moment  are  the 
signs  apparent  that  it  will  come  to  pass  in  the 
near  future.  The  fact  is  that  a  third  power, 
which  was  active  even  while  this  debate  was 
at  its  height — a  power  which  is  almost  as  little 
related  to  science  as  to  religion — has  risen  into 
prominence  and  gained  the  ascendancy  over  both 
of  them.  The  common  name  for  it  is  “  policy.” 
So  far  as  the  world  can  be  said  to  be  ruled  by 
anything — and  it  would  be  stretching  compli¬ 
ments  to  say  that  it  is — this  is  the  ruling  power. 
What  policy  means  may  be  hard  to  define, 
but  it  certainly  means  something  of  immense 
importance  to  the  mind  of  the  age — something, 
at  all  events,  of  immensely  greater  importance 


69 


THE  DEGRADATION  OF  POLICY 

than  either  science  or  religion.  It  is  policy 
that  the  public  expects  and  respects  ;  to  policy 
it  trusts  its  fortunes  ;  on  policy  it  stakes  its 
hopes.  Were  it  proved  of  a  Cabinet  Minister 
that  he  had  neither  science  nor  religion,  few 
people  would  think  much  the  worse  of  him. 
But  what  should  we  say  if  it  were  proved  that 
he  had  no  policy  ? 

Is  it  not  a  fact  that  we  attach  more  import¬ 
ance  to  parliaments  than  to  laboratories,  and 
to  prime  ministers  than  to  popes  ?  Do  we  not 
spend  far  more  time  in  making  speeches  than 
in  saying  our  prayers  ?  Are  we  not  more 
excited  about  the  secrets  of  cabinets  than 
about  the  secrets  of  nature  ?  In  the  speeches 
that  are  made  on  the  eve  of  a  general  elec¬ 
tion,  in  the  44  platforms  ”  that  are  built,  in  the 
programmes  put  forward,  in  the  promises  made, 
how  rarely  you  discover  a  trace  of  the  scientific 
spirit,  to  say  nothing  of  the  religious  !  How 
seldom  is  science  or  religion  so  much  as  men¬ 
tioned  !  How  often  the  word  44  policy  ”  comes 
in  !  By  policy  we  plan  our  New  Jerusalems, 
and  by  voting  we  bring  them  into  existence. 
Such  is  the  orthodox  credo  of  the  day. 

I  am  aware  that  this  sharp  distinction 


70 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


between  policy  on  the  one  hand  and  science  and 
religion  on  the  other  is  what  is  commonly 
called  “  unphilosophical.”  I  hear  the  reader 
reminding  me  that  policy,  after  all,  is  only  a 
name  for  the  application  in  public  affairs  of 
truths  which  have  a  scientific  or  a  religious 
basis,  or  perhaps  both.  This  unquestionably 
is  the  right  philosophical  view  of  the  matter. 
But  the  actual  conduct  of  our  public  affairs 
does  not  reflect  a  philosophical  view,  and  it  is 
policy  in  being,  and  not  the  philosophy  of 
politics,  of  which  I  am  writing.  Whatever 
theoretical  connections  may  exist  between 
policy,  science,  and  religion,  there  can  be  no 
doubt  as  to  which  of  them  in  practice  is  the 
predominant  partner. 

A  striking  example  was  afforded  some  time 
ago  in  the  discussion  about  the  feeding  of 
Germany.  This  was  generally  approved,  both 
by  statesmen  and  by  the  newspaper  press, 
though  not  without  a  good  deal  of  previous 
hesitation,  and  with  a  certain  shamefacedness 
when  it  came  to  the  point.  But,  with  a  few 
notable  exceptions,  neither  our  statesmen  nor 
our  press  supported  the  feeding  of  Germany  on 
grounds  that  could  be  called  either  religious, 


THE  DEGRADATION  OF  POLICY 


71 


moral,  or  scientific.  It  was  a  fine  opportunity 
for  them  to  show  their  religion,  or  their  morals, 
or  their  science,  if  they  had  any  one  of  the 
three.  All  three  were  conspicuous  by  absence. 
Again  and  again  one  read  in  speeches  and 
articles  of  that  time,  until  the  refrain  became 
quite  sickening,  that  Germany  must  indeed  be 
fed,  but  not  on  moral  grounds,  not  on  sentimental 
grounds,  not  on  humanitarian  grounds — as  if 
any  reference  to  these  things  would  have 
immediately  discredited  the  whole  argument 
— but  on  grounds  of  policy  ;  which  meant,  of 
course,  when  translated  from  the  language  of 
current  hypocrisy  into  plain  speech,  that  unless 
we  fed  the  victim  up  in  good  time,  we  should 
find  him  all  skin  and  bones  when  he  came  to 
be  roasted.  A  public  spirit  which  argues  or 
permits  itself  to  be  argued  with  in  this  way 
is  as  far  removed  from  the  spirit  of  science  as 
it  is  from  that  of  religion.  Atrocious  as  such 
an  argument  would  be  from  the  point  of  view 
of  the  Gospel,  it  would  be  idiotic  from  that 
of  Bentham  or  Spencer. 

But-  particular  instances  need  not  be 
laboured.  To  the  least  attentive  observer  it 
must  be  obvious  that  policy,  as  expressed  in 


72 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


contemporary  politics,  is  far  too  much  at  the 
mercy  of  caprice,  ignorance,  and  passion,  far 
too  entangled  in  a  net  of  intrigue,  far  too  closely 
allied  with  Machiavellian  arts,  far  too  depen¬ 
dent  on  parliamentary  stress  of  weather,  far  too 
deeply  involved  in  the  erratic  fortunes  of 
eminent  persons,  to  be  either  scientific  or  re¬ 
ligious  in  any  intelligible  sense  of  the  term. 
Our  notions  of  policy  have  developed  in  other 
company.  They  express  the  ideals  of  an 
acquisitive  society ;  they  reflect  the  cupidity 
of  nations,  groups,  and  classes  ;  they  are  com¬ 
promised  by  vote-catching  interests  ;  they  are 
entangled  in  the  arts  of  electioneering  ;  they 
are  contaminated  with  every  kind  of  personal 
and  party  ambition.  The  fruits  are  confusion. 

Political  scepticism  is  on  the  increase.  There 
is  a  growing  suspicion  that  the  destinies  of 
nations  are  not  safe,  and  can  never  be  safe,  so 
long  as  they  are  at  the  mercy  of  the  44  policies  ” 
which  the  official  mind  originates  and  directs. 
Men  are  coming  to  view  our  present  distractions 
as  the  result  of  a  long-drawn-out  attempt  to  rule 
the  world  in  that  manner,  and  to  believe  that, 
whatever  refinements  or  improvements  of  it 


THE  DEGRADATION  OF  POLICY 


73 


may  be  effected,  they  will  merely  shift  the  seat 
of  strife,  and  not  destroy  the  causes.  The 
belief  is  growing  that  the  “policy”  of  the 
world  lies  at  the  mercy  of  a  group  of  false  ideas 
and  mistaken  methods,  of  which  strife  and 
bloodshed  are,  sooner  or  later,  the  outcome. 
This  goes  far  deeper  than  any  question  as 
to  the  merits  of  democracy  versus  autocracy. 
Under  the  one  system  as  under  the  other, 
statesmanship  has  lost  touch  with  the  great 
ideals  of  mankind,  with  the  great  motives  of 
community  life,  with  the  souls  of  nations  ; 
policy  has  degenerated  into  the  manipulation 
of  selfish  motives  ;  diplomacy  has  become  a 
thing  apart  from  reality;  and  men  are  begin¬ 
ning  to  ask  whether  voting,  elections,  parlia¬ 
ments,  law  courts,  and  police,  whether  national 
or  international,  are  the  last  words  when  the 
common  good  is  in  question.  Hence  a  pro¬ 
found  and  universal  unrest. 

Thus  the  political  sceptic  finds  nothing  to  be 
gained  by  extending  and  perpetuating,  in  a 
league  of  nations,  the  political  systems,  methods, 
ideas,  and  traditions  which,  in  his  view,  have 
brought  us  into  the  present  sea  of  troubles. 
It  is  an  attempt  to  integrate  elements  whose 


74 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


very  nature  is  to  fly  asunder,  to  secure  peace 
for  an  enterprise  which  is  essentially  one  of 
strife.  He  distrusts,  not  only  the  system,  but 
still  more  the  type  of  mind,  of  personality,  of 
leadership  which  has  become  the  recognised 
exponent  of  these  things,  and  regards  both  the 
system  and  the  mind  which  works  it  as  not 
big  enough,  either  morally  or  intellectually, 
for  governing  such  a  world  as  ours.  The 
political  State  he  finds  too  deeply  committed 
to  the  spirit  of  combative  nationalism  ever 
to  become  a  model  for  the  federation  of  free 
peoples.  This,  if  ever  it  comes,  will  not  be  a 
larger  version  of  any  of  them,  or  the  common 
measure  of  them  all,  but  a  community  of  a 
different  type.  The  next  step  forward  will  be 
in  a  new  direction. 

But  political  scepticism  is  not  a  mere  bundle 
of  negations.  It  has  a  positive  aim,  which  is 
this  :  that  the  League  should  make  itself  the 
interpreter  and  guide  of  human  culture ;  that 
it  should  devise  its  form  for  that  purpose ; 
that  instead  of  basing  itself  on  a  refinement 
of  the  discredited  policies  of  the  past,  it  should 
become,  in  its  corporate  capacity,  the  organ  of 
ideals  in  consonance  with  the  awakened  con- 


75 


THE  DEGRADATION  OF  POLICY 

science  of  mankind.  This  would  not  be  yield¬ 
ing  to  revolution ;  for,  let  it  be  noted,  the 
discontents  of  which  I  have  spoken,  infinitely 
dangerous  when  they  are  left  unguided  and 
uninterpreted,  cease  to  be  revolutionary  just 
in  so  far  as  means  are  found  for  their  orderly 
expression. 

To  find  such  means  is,  I  suggest,  the  para¬ 
mount  business  which  a  league  of  nations 
should  undertake.  But  they  will  not  be  found 
so  long  as  the  nations  are  treated  as  wealth¬ 
seeking  units,  and  ingenuity  is  confined  to 
devising  the  machinery  which  is  to  check  the 
sordid  scramble  at  the  point  where  it  threatens 
to  break  out  into  war.  The  negative  ideal  of 
not  fighting  is  preposterously  inadequate  for 
the  League  of  Nations,  not  only  because  it 
lacks  all  positive  content,  but  still  more  because 
it  involves  the  absurdity  of  imposing  peace  on 
motives  whose  very  nature  is  to  fight,  while  the 
motives  themselves  are  left  in  being  to  chafe 
at  their  new  restraints.  A  league  so  occupied 
would  merely  sit  upon  the  chief  safety-valve  of 
the  modern  State ;  for  it  is  a  fact,  deplore  it  as 
we  may,  that  war  has  hitherto  been  the  only 
means  the  wealth-making  empires  of  the  world 


76 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


possessed  for  letting  off,  at  intervals,  the  ex¬ 
plosive  forces  that  are  for  ever  being  generated 
by  “something  rotten”  in  the  state  of  acquisi¬ 
tive  society.  To  be  worthy  of  the  ideals  which 
have  called  it  into  being,  to  be  worthy  even  of 
its  name,  the  League  must  concern  itself  directly 
with  the  things  that  give  value,  meaning  and 
dignity  to  human  life.  Save  in  so  far  as  it  is 
able  to  propose  for  the  nations  in  concert  some 
higher  object  than  any  single  State  has  ever 
proposed  for  itself,  the  world  has  no  use  for  it. 
Its  true  function  is  to  give  meaning  to  what 
has  hitherto  been  the  meaningless  life  of  indus¬ 
trial  civilisation,  to  lift  it  out  of  the  slough  of 
its  sordid  motives,  and  to  set  it  at  last  on  the 
path  of  humane  culture. 

Granting,  what  I  would  not  deny,  that  the 
first  task  is  to  placate  the  present  storm  by 
making  the  best  peace  the  circumstances  permit 
of,1  yet  in  the  terms  of  that  peace,  in  the 
manner  of  its  imposition,  in  the  gesture  which 
accompanies  the  deed,  the  whole  world  is  look¬ 
ing  for  signs  that  a  new  and  higher  motive  is 
in  being.  It  is  precisely  at  this  point  that  a 
single  noble  sentiment,  a  single  generous  im- 

1  Written  in  1919. 


THE  DEGRADATION  OF  POLICY 


77 


pulse,  a  single  magnanimous  word,  would  count 
for  more  as  a  peace-making  force  than  the  most 
skilful  adjustments  of  rival  interests  and  the 
most  formidable  penalties  against  breakers  of 
the  peace  that  the  political  draughtsman  could 
devise.  If  none  of  this  appears,  if  the  new 
44  policy  ”  is  nothing  more  than  a  new  tune 
played  on  the  old  strings  of  combative  nation¬ 
alism,  we  shall  soon  have  reason  to  wish  that 
the  44  peace  55  had  never  been  heard  of.  The 
greatest  opportunity  which  statesmanship  has 
ever  had  for  regaining  the  lost  confidence  of 
the  peoples  will  have  been  thrown  away,  and 
the  political  mind,  as  it  now  exists,  will  have 
once  more  demonstrated  its  incompetence  for 
the  task  of  pacification.  After  which  the 
deluge. 

It  is  perhaps  inevitable  that  the  League  of 
Nations  should  begin  its  existence  on  the 
political  plane,  as  an  instrument  designed  for 
restraining  the  forces  that  hurt  and  destroy,  as 
an  experiment  in  44  government  ”  working  by 
the  familiar  modes  of  voting,  elections,  parlia¬ 
ments,  law  courts,  and  police.  It  might  con¬ 
ceivably  have  begun  otherwise — for  example, 
in  a  form  more  analogous  to  the  Church  than 


78 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


to  the  political  State — and  unquestionably  it 
would  have  begun  in  that  manner  but  for  cer¬ 
tain  accidents  of  history.  But  the  facts  of  the 
situation  must  be  accepted,  and  it  is  idle  to 
speculate  on  what  would  have  happened  if  the 
League  had  originated  more  from  the  desire  of 
the  nations  to  save  their  souls  and  less  from  the 
desire  to  confirm  their  conquests  in  perpetuity. 

But  though  the  way  lies  through  politics,  the 
goal  is  beyond  them,  and  it  is  impossible  that 
the  start  should  be  rightly  made  unless  the 
goal  is  kept  steadily  in  view.  This  is  not 
merely  to  restrain  the  forces  that  make  for 
war,  but  to  do  a  far  greater  thing — to  liberate 
the  forces  that  make  for  peace .  In  all  nations 
there  are  at  this  moment  immense  reserves  of 
these  forces,  repressed  or  misdirected  or  un¬ 
used,  but  waiting  to  be  enlisted  and  combined 
for  common  achievement  in  the  manifold  arts, 
interests  and  pursuits  that  give  man  his  voca¬ 
tion  on  this  planet.  This  work  of  liberation, 
enlistment,  and  redirection,  conceived  as  a  co¬ 
operative  task  on  a  world-wide  basis,  is  the 
function  of  a  league  of  nations.  To  form  it 
for  any  purpose  less  than  this  is  to  form  it  in 
vain. 


THE  DEGRADATION  OF  POLICY  79 


Such  a  conception,  remote  as  it  may  seem 
from  the  problems  of  the  hour,  has  immense 
value  in  helping  us  to  solve  them.  It  defines 
the  spirit  in  which  the  beginning  must  be  made. 
Magnanimity  is  demanded  at  the  outset,  while 
meanness,  rapacity  and  revenge  are  ruled  out 
as  absolutely  fatal.  An  arrangement,  however 
ingeniously  contrived,  which  lacks  the  first 
quality  and  displays  the  others,  is  off  the 
track  a  league  of  nations  has  to  follow.  A 
league  of  conquerors,  for  example,  dominated 
by  the  habits  of  mind  which  conquest  invari¬ 
ably  engenders,  cannot,  under  any  conceivable 
circumstances,  develop  into  a  genuine  frater¬ 
nity  of  free  peoples  ;  it  would  be  a  false  start, 
and  its  psychology,  to  say  nothing  of  its  morals, 
would  condemn  it.  Even  as  keeper  of  the 
peace  a  league  of  conquerors  will  not  succeed. 
Nor  do  we  make  its  failure  the  less  assured  by 
baptising  it  a  league  of  nations. 

In  an  article  contributed  to  the  Harvard 
Theological  Review ,x  Dr  F.  G.  Peabody  draws 
the  distinction  between  peace-ma&mg  and 
peace-keeping,  and  reminds  us  that  the  bless¬ 
ing  of  the  gospel  is  pronounced  on  the  peace- 

1  January  1919. 


80 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


makers .  Indeed,  the  two  things  are  by  no 
means  the  same,  although  often  confused. 
They  employ  different  methods  and  have 
different  ideals,  of  which  the  ideal  of  the 
peace-maker  is  incomparably  the  higher. 
While  the  peace-keeper  is  engaged  with  the 
negative  object  of  preventing  strife,  the  peace¬ 
maker  has  the  positive  aim  of  promoting 
fellowship.  “  Thou  shalt  not  fight  55  is  the 
motto  of  the  one  ;  “  Thou  shalt  co-operate  ” 
is  the  motto  of  the  other.  The  methods  of 
the  peace-keeper  invariably  end  in  the  resort  to 
law  courts  and  police  ;  the  peace-maker,  on  the 
other  hand,  works  by  a  method  which  includes 
all  that  the  peace-keeper  sets  out  to  accomplish, 
and  a  great  deal  more.  He  says  nothing 
about  peace-keeping,  and  may  seem  at  first 
sight  to  be  indifferent  to  it ;  but  by  engaging  ’ 
men  in  positive  co-operations  he  sets  their 
relations  on  a  footing  where  the  peace  is  kept 
automatically.  In  this  he  shows  himself  a 
good  psychologist.  For  while,  broadly  speak¬ 
ing,  all  men  and  all  nations  desire  to  be  at 
peace  with  one  another,  none  of  them  desires 
to  be  kept  at  peace  by  the  rest ;  or,  more  strictly 
speaking,  while  some  are  willing  to  play  the 


THE  DEGRADATION  OF  POLICY 


81 


part  of  peace-keepers  to  the  others,  all  are 
unwilling  that  others  should  play  the  part  of 
peace-keepers  to  them.  Thus,  by  its  very 
nature,  peace-keeping  is  an  irritating  topic, 
which  can  hardly  be  introduced  without  sow¬ 
ing  the  seeds  of  new  recalcitrancy  and  discord. 
Many  of  the  great  conquerors  of  the  world 
have  loved  to  exhibit  themselves  in  the  role 
of  peace-keepers,  and  many  great  wars  have 
originated  from  the  notions  which  such  men 
entertain  of  the  methods  by  which  peace  is  to 
be  kept. 

So  the  peace-maker  avoids  this  dangerous 

topic  as  much  as  he  can.  He  promotes  the 

idea  of  mutual  service  ;  he  enriches  the  world 

with  the  arts  of  co-operation ;  he  invents 

devices  for  bearing  the  common  burden  ;  he 

institutes  communities  of  knowledge  ;  he 

founds  schools,  and  would,  if  he  had  his  way, 

turn  the  whole  world  into  a  university  of  high 

achievement,  where  men  and  nations  might 

learn  day  by  day  their  need  of  each  other’s 

help.  His  manners  correspond  to  his  methods. 

He  is  neither  artful  nor  repressive,  but  frank, 

pitiful  and  magnanimous ;  for  he  knows  how 

true  it  is  of  nations,  as  of  individuals,  that  tout 

6 


82 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


savoir  esi  tout  pardonner.  Such  is  the  peace- 
maker ,  and  it  is  only  by  following  him  that  the 
world  will  ever  be  kept  at  peace. 

The  great  weakness  of  the  propaganda  for  a 
league  of  nations  lies  in  the  fact  that  it  has 
seldom  risen  beyond  the  level  of  the  peace- 
keeping  conception.  A  fatality,  born  of  our 
limited  notions  of  policy,  has  confined  thought 
to  this  lower  ground.  Hence  it  is  that  the 
League,  backed  though  it  be  by  the  desire  of 
all  nations  to  be  at  peace,  has  to  reckon  with 
the  unwillingness  of  every  nation  to  be  kept  at 
peace  by  the  others  ;  an  unwillingness  which 
is  clearly  revealed  in  the  tendency  of  each  of 
the  Great  Powers  to  make  some  exception  in 
its  own  favour  —  sea-power  for  Britain,  the 
Monroe  Doctrine  for  America,  and  so  on — 
which  leaves  it  virtually  the  master  of  its  own 
actions.  Whether  or  not  America  would  con¬ 
sent  to  aid  in  keeping  the  peace  of  Europe,  I 
take  it  as  certain  that  she  would  never  consent 
to  be  kept  at  peace  by  Europe  if  her  own  honour 
and  ideals,  as  she  interprets  them  to  herself, 
required  her  to  go  to  war.  Nor  would  Europe 
in  similar  circumstances  suffer  herself  to  be 
kept  at  peace  by  America.  How  could  any 


THE  DEGRADATION  OF  POLICY 


83 


nation  which  has  reached  moral  maturity 
enter  into  such  an  engagement  ?  And  how  can 
the  morally  mature  nations  impose  it  on  the 
morally  immature,  unless  at  the  same  time 
they  reciprocally  impose  it  upon  one  another  ? 
Material  interests  apart,  such  a  concession, 
made  by  a  mature  nation,  would  be  tanta¬ 
mount  to  the  loss  of  its  sovereign  right  to 
be,  in  the  last  resort,  the  author  of  its  own 
conduct. 

Clearly  another  way  must  be  found  ;  and  the 
way  indicated  is  that  of  the  peace-maker.  As 
a  mere  peace-keeping  institution  in  the  sense 
indicated,  the  League  of  Nations  is  doomed  to 
be  a  disastrous  failure  ;  for  it  will  provoke  far 
more  quarrels  than  it  will  either  prevent  or 
allay.  Not  until  we  conceive  its  functions  in 
terms  of  peace-making  shall  we  begin  to  under¬ 
stand  what  it  is  we  have  set  ourselves  to 
accomplish. 

We  shall  not  greatly  err  if,  for  the  time 
being,  we  dismiss  political  considerations  from 
our  minds  and  think  of  the  League  as  an  enter¬ 
prise  in  international  education ,  whose  first 
business  is  to  introduce  the  elements  of  mutual 
trust,  understanding,  and  goodwill  into  the 


84 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


prevailing  chaos  of  barbaric  motives.  Frankly, 

I  would  attach  more  importance  to  a  scheme 
for  the  establishment  of  international  univer¬ 
sities,  open  to  all  classes  and  especially  to  the 
workers,  than  to  the  most  formidable  machinery 
for  policing  the  world,  if  only  because  it  strikes 
the  note  of  education,  indicates  the  need  of 
creating  the  international  mind,  and  so  carries 
us  away  from  the  ground  dominated  by  the 
malign  spirit  of  traditional  diplomacy  and  the 
arts  of  the  politician.  Four  hundred  years  ago 
Europe  was  far  more  of  a  living  unity  than  it 
has  been  since  ;  and  it  owed  its  unity  in  no 
small  measure  to  the  splendid  influence  of  the 
men  who  went  forth  into  all  lands  from  its 
international  universities,  where  they  had  been 
educated  as  citizens  of  the  world.  The  same 
thing  might  be  repeated  to-day  on  an  immensely 
vaster  scale.  Nor  would  patriotism  suffer  the 
smallest  loss. 

Again,  taking  a  wider  view,  if  we  think  of 
the  League  as  the  beginning  of  a  concerted 
crusade  by  all  nations  against  the  inhuman 
mechanism,  the  base  acquisitiveness,  the  low 
morals  and  vile  habits  of  mind  which  are  now 
covered  by  the  word  “  policy  ”  ;  if  we  think 


THE  DEGRADATION  OF  POLICY 


85 


of  it  as  an  effort  to  dismiss  the  standard  of 
quantity  and  erect  the  standard  of  quality  over 
the  whole  field  of  industrial  life,  and  so  provide 
man  with  a  vocation  that  is  worthy  of  him — 
the  world-organ  of  a  revolution  against  the 
reign  of  cupidity,  ugliness,  squalor — in  short, 
a  redemptive  and  not  a  mere  preventive  enter¬ 
prise,  do  we  not  see  in  a  movement  so  con¬ 
ceived  guarantees  of  peace  a  thousand  times 
more  effectual  than  any  crusade  against  war 
can  promise  ? 

Anything  which  moves  on  these  lines  may 
be  welcomed,  and  hailed  as  the  dawn  of  a  new 
day.  The  march  of  events  will  doubtless  pro¬ 
vide  many  opportunities.  Possibly,  nay  prob¬ 
ably,  we  may  find  ourselves  before  long  in 
presence  of  a  threat  to  the  whole  fabric  of  in¬ 
dustrial  civilisation  due  to  the  humiliating  fact 
that  the  follies  of  the  world  have  brought  it  to 
a  financial  precipice.  Even  that  may  be  a 
blessing  in  disguise.  Co-operation  forced  upon 
the  nations  by  the  need  to  save  themselves 
from  bankruptcy  may  prove  the  beginning  of 
co-operation  in  endless  other  forms.  And  yet 
it  were  better  not  to  wait  until  action  is  forced 
upon  them  by  the  onset  of  calamity. 


86 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


We  need  a  league  of  ideas  to  furnish  the 
League  of  Nations  with  aim,  spirit,  and  form  : 
the  religious  idea,  the  moral,  the  educational, 
the  economic,  and — let  it  be  granted — the  poli¬ 
tical.  Of  this  mixed  company  the  political 
idea  is  not  the  one  that  I  would  select  as  des¬ 
tined  to  play  the  chief  part  in  founding  a 
brotherhood  of  free  peoples.  Under  happier 
auspices  the  political  idea  might  indeed  have 
become  the  summary  of  all  the  rest.  It  has  not. 
It  has  degenerated,  until  the  word  “  policy,” 
on  the  lips  of  nine  persons  out  of  ten  who  use 
it,  conveys  no  higher  conception  than  the  astute 
adjustment  of  selfish  motives  operating  in  the 
struggle  for  power.  Such  a  conception,  what¬ 
ever  use  it  may  have  in  other  spheres,  and  what¬ 
ever  skill  in  draughtsmanship  it  may  command 
in  this,  is  utterly  inadequate  for  the  work  of 
reconciliation  and  fraternity.  In  this  connec¬ 
tion  it  is  worse  than  useless ;  it  is  disastrous, 
and  if  allowed  to  dominate  the  councils  of  the 
nations  at  this  juncture,  it  will  only  wake  the 
sleeping  dogs. 

Yet  this,  alas  !  is  the  obsession  of  the  official 
mind,  the  fetish  of  all  the  vested  interests  in 
the  world.  64  Policy  ”  has  proved  a  broken  reed 


THE  DEGRADATION  OF  POLICY 


87 


in  every  great  crisis  of  history  ;  and  though 
the  nations  have  suffered  their  destinies  to  fall 
into  its  power  for  a  time,  they  are  learning 
to  know  it  for  what  it  is,  and  every  deeper 
tendency  of  the  age  is  in  revolt  against  its 
domination. 

The  idea  is  widely  prevalent  that,  because  the 
problem  of  pacification  is  so  vast,  so  complex, 
so  involved  in  selfish  interests  and  danger¬ 
ous  passions,  it  will  tolerate  no  moral  ideal¬ 
ism,  but  must  be  solved  by  strict  and  exclusive 
regard  to  44  policy.”  This  essay  is  intended  to 
suggest  the  opposite.  Just  because  the  prob¬ 
lem  is  so  vast,  so  complex,  so  involved  in 
selfish  interests  and  dangerous  passions,  I 
plead  that  moral  idealism  is  the  only  force 
that  can  save  us.  We  are  in  the  presence  of 
an  immense  entanglement  which  must  be  cut 
through  by  the  sword  of  the  spirit.  We  are 
in  deep  waters,  and  the  astute  political  mind 
is  utterly  out  of  its  depth.  The  whole  world 
is  crying  out  for  moral  idealism  ;  the  demand 
for  a  league  of  nations  is  the  expression  of 
its  desire.  We  wait  for  this  highest  thing  as 
they  that  wait  for  the  morning  ;  and  whenever 


88 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


the  gleams  of  it  appear  on  the  horizon,  as 
they  do  from  time  to  time,  there  is  a  deep 
response  from  the  hearts  of  millions,  and  the 
hopes  revive  which  “  policy  ”  has  well-nigh 
crushed. 


THE  VALIDITY  OF  INTER¬ 
NATIONAL  COMPACTS 

In  the  late  years  of  tension,  turmoil,  and 
desperation  we  have  witnessed  the  spread  of 
a  doctrine  which  may  be  called — without  pre¬ 
judice  to  others  similarly  named — the  doctrine 
of  Salvation  by  International  Compact.  Future 
historians  will  doubtless  have  something  in¬ 
teresting  to  say  about  the  causes  which  led  to 
the  development  of  a  doctrine  so  intrinsically 
remarkable ;  and  also,  perhaps,  about  its 
general  validity. 

The  essence  of  it  seems  to  be  that  the  peace 
of  mankind,  with  its  attendant  blessings,  can 
be  kept  by  the  simple  device  of  a  compact 
between  governments  to  keep  it.  Among  the 
many  doctrines  of  salvation  offered  to  a  troubled 
world  none  has  been  more  ardently  believed  in. 
And  yet  there  is  none  that  stands  more  urgently 
in  need  of  criticism. 


89 


90 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


Whenever  an  international  compact  is  under 
consideration,  whether  in  the  partial  form  of 
the  Treaty  of  Versailles,  or  in  the  universal  form 
contemplated  by  the  League  of  Nations,  two 
questions  arise  which  need  to  be  kept  apart. 
The  first  is  the  question  of  framing  the  com¬ 
pact,  of  getting  it  made.  The  second  is  the 
question  of  keeping  it  when  made.  The  first 
is  difficult,  but  the  second  immensely  more  so. 
What  are  the  chances,  the  probabilities,  that  any 
international  compact,  between  such  govern¬ 
ments  as  those  that  now  exist  on  the  earth, 
will  be  kept  by  the  nations  which,  through  the 
action  of  their  governments,  have  been  com¬ 
mitted  to  it  ? 

It  is  a  remarkable  fact  that  this  question  is 
seldom  raised  among  the  believers  in  Salvation 
by  International  Compact.  The  common  as¬ 
sumption  is,  that  when  the  governments  con¬ 
cerned  have  come  to  an  agreement  and  signed 
their  compact  the  business  will  virtually  be 
done.  Against  this,  however,  may  be  set  a 
remark  overheard  after  the  conference  at  Genoa. 
“  Thank  God  there  has  been  no  agreement. 
For  if  there  had  been,  it  would  have  been  broken 
in  a  month  and  we  should  have  had  another 


VALIDITY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  COMPACTS  91 


row.”  Possibly  the  author  of  this  remark  had 
grasped  a  point  which  seems  to  have  escaped 
a  good  many  of  his  contemporaries — that  a 
world  44  safe  for  democracy  ”  may  be,  at  the 
same  time,  radically  unsafe  for  international 
compacts,  in  fact  the  unsafest  of  all  possible 
worlds  for  them .  All  depends  on  the  relations 
existing  between  the  democratic  governments 
and  the  nations  behind  them  on  whose  behalf 
the  compacts  are  made.  In  some  instances 
these  relations  are  highly  precarious. 

The  validity  of  an  international  compact 
obviously  assumes  that  each  and  all  of  the  con¬ 
tracting  governments  have  sufficient  authority 
in  their  own  houses  to  ensure  the  adhesion  of 
their  nationals  to  the  engagements  made.  Of 
how  many  existing  governments  can  it  be  said 
that  they  possess  this  power  ?  None  of  them 
possess  it  without  qualifications  which  go  far 
to  imperil  their  engagements.  In  the  Treaty 
of  Versailles,  for  example,  the  representatives 
of  Great  Britain  pledged  the  nation  to  terms 
which  have  never  satisfied  public  opinion, 
while  Mr  Wilson’s  signature  was  promptly 
repudiated  by  the  American  people.  But  if 
this  is  the  position  of  the  strongest  among 


92 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


democratic  governments,  what  shall  we  say  of 
the  weakest  ?  Is  it  not  obvious,  for  example, 
that  official  acceptance  of  the  terms  by  the 
government  of  Germany  was  quite  worthless, 
for  this  reason,  if  for  no  other,  that  the  said 
government  lacked  the  power  to  compel  the 
German  people  to  submit  to  the  exactions 
demanded,  even  assuming  that  the  people  were 
fully  able  to  bear  them  ?  The  power  of  com¬ 
pulsion  which  the  old  German  government 
possessed  over  its  nationals  did  not  exist,  and 
does  not  exist  at  the  present  moment,  in  the 
new  one.  The  instance  is  no  doubt  extreme, 
but  certainly  not  peculiar.  No  existing  demo¬ 
cratic  government  is  in  a  position  to  guarantee 
that  its  signature  to  a  compact  will  be  con¬ 
tinuously  honoured  by  the  people  on  whose 
behalf  it  signs. 

Of  all  this,  little  account  seems  to  be  taken 
in  current  discussion  of  these  matters,  and 
none  at  all  by  fanatical  believers  in  Salvation 
by  International  Compact.  In  most  of  the 
schemes  that  have  been  put  forward  for  a 
league  of  nations,  including  that  embodied  in 
the  Covenant,  the  contracting  “  States  ”  are 
treated  as  having  unlimited  power  to  carry  out 


VALIDITY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  COMPACTS  93 


their  engagements  or,  what  amounts  to  the 
same  thing,  to  compel  their  nationals  to  do  so. 
But  there  are  no  such  44  States.”  In  the 
strongest  of  them  there  is  a  strict  limit  to 
the  extent  of  the  obligations  which  govern¬ 
ments  can  safely  undertake  on  behalf  of 
their  constituencies  with  a  reasonable  pros¬ 
pect  that  they  will  be  sustained.  In  the 
weakest  of  them  the  power  to  do  this  is  virtu¬ 
ally  non-existent.  Of  half  the  governments  now 
existing  in  Europe ,  it  is  no  exaggeration  to  say 
that  their  signatures  are  worthless.  They  lack 
the  power  to  complete  their  contracts.  It 
was  Signor  Nitti  who  signed  the  Covenant  for 
Italy.  But  Signor  Nitti  has  vanished  from 
high  politics.  We  are  now  dealing  with  Signor 
Mussolini. 

Of  late  we  have  had  plenty  of  object- 
lessons  indicating  the  lion  in  the  path. 
Since  the  end  of  the  war  a  whole  series  of 
international  compacts,  of  wider  or  narrower 
scope,  have  been  duly  signed,  sealed,  and  de¬ 
livered  by  representatives  of  the  44  Powers” — 
a  term  which  appears  to  be  somewhat  of  a 
misnomer  in  this  connection — the  Treaty  of 
Versailles,  the  Treaty  of  St  Germain,  the  Treaty 


94 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


of  Trianon,  the  Treaty  of  Sevres,  not  to  speak 
of  “  agreements  ”  of  one  kind  or  another  drawn 
up  at  various  “  conferences.”  What  has  be¬ 
come  of  them  ?  The  Treaty  of  Versailles  has 
been  crumbling  from  the  moment  it  came 
into  existence.  Trianon  and  St  Germain  are 
virtually  forgotten.  Sevres  has  been  smashed 
to  pieces.  Their  authors  are  here  to-day  and 
gone  to-morrow.  Had  the  signatories  been 
kings,  or  emperors,  ruling  over  submissive 
peoples,  the  arrangements  made  might  have 
lasted  at  least  a  few  years.  Made  by  such 
governments  as  made  them,  their  validity  was 
bound  to  decline. 

Before  salvation  can  be  wrought  by  an  inter¬ 
national  compact  of  governments,  partial  or 
complete,  the  relations  between  governments 
and  the  peoples  behind  them  will  have  to  be 
very  different  from  what  they  are.  Such  com¬ 
pacts  will  doubtless  continue  to  be  made ,  but 
they  will  not  be  kept ,  which  is  tantamount  to 
saying  that  it  were  better  not  to  make  them  at 
all.  Some  deeper  form  of  representation  will 
have  to  be  found  by  which  a  government, 
acting  in  international  affairs  on  behalf  of  a 
people,  can  express  what  is  permanent  and 


VALIDITY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  COMPACTS  95 


lasting  in  that  people’s  will.  And  the  change 
must  take  place  not  in  one  nation  only  but  in 
all,  for  in  this  matter  the  chain  is  no  stronger 
than  its  weakest  link  :  the  presence  of  one 
weak  or  treacherous  member  in  a  group  of 
contracting  powers  imperils  the  whole  con¬ 
tract.  Failing  this  condition — and  at  present 
there  is  no  prospect  of  its  being  fulfilled — the 
alternative  remains  of  finding  some  other  means, 
some  other  organ,  by  which  nations  can  co¬ 
operate  in  the  field  of  their  common  interests. 
Immense  possibilities  in  this  direction  are  wait¬ 
ing  to  be  explored — by  economists,  by  men  of 
business,  by  men  of  science,  by  men  of  religion, 
by  educationalists,  by  representatives  of  art, 
philosophy,  and  culture.  When  the  League  of 
Nations  becomes  a  living  fact  perhaps  it  may 
turn  out  to  be  not  a  League  of  Governments  at  all. 


A  WAY  ROUND 


If  we  put  these  two  characteristics  together 
— first,  the  essential  precariousness  of  demo¬ 
cratic  governments ;  second,  the  war-made 
form  and  martial  psychology  of  the  modern 
State — we  have  before  us  the  chief  reasons  for 
doubting  whether  the  political  State  is  a  good 
model  for  the  future  community  of  mankind. 
Certainly  not  a  good  model  to  have  exclusively 
in  mind,  nor  perhaps  primarily.  I  will  not  go 
the  length  of  saying  that  the  political  State 
has  no  place  whatever  in  these  speculations, 
and  ought  to  be  dismissed  entirely.  But  the 
international  mind  must  refuse  to  tie  itself 
down  to  the  political  model  as  if  that  alone 
would  solve  the  problem.  The  internationalist 
must  hold  himself  free,  at  this  point,  to  con¬ 
sider  the  claims  of  other  models  of  com¬ 
munity  life,  of  which  there  are  many,  and  to 
examine  them  impartially.  Perhaps  he  will  find 


A  WAY  ROUND 


97 


among  them  one  or  more,  capable  of  a  world¬ 
wide  development,  which,  if  developed  on  a 
world-wide  scale,  would  bring  him  nearer  to 
the  final  unification  of  mankind. 

We  need  some  means  of  promoting  inter¬ 
nationalism  which  will  not  involve,  as  our 
present  methods  are  doing,  an  immediate 
collision  with  the  principle  of  nationality, 
everywhere  combative  and  powerful.  As  every¬ 
body  knows,  or  ought  to  have  learned  by  this 
time,  combative  nationalism  blocks  the  way — 
blocks  it  with  innumerable  questions  of  sovereign 
rights,  which  is  a  political  difficulty  ;  blocks  it 
with  the  resolute  demand  of  every  mature  nation 
to  be  the  guardian  of  its  own  honour,  which  is 
a  moral  difficulty ;  blocks  it  with  armaments, 
which  is  a  diabolical  difficulty. 

But  is  there  no  way  round  this  formidable 
obstacle  which,  in  the  meantime,  may  be  left 
standing  and  unchallenged  ? 

The  way  round  is,  indeed,  a  long  one,  but 
a  long  way  which  leads  to  our  goal  is  better 
than  a  short  one  which  leads  to  a  bottomless 
abyss.  And  may  we  not  take  it  as  axiomatic 
that  no  short-cut  exists  to  the  goal  which  the 
international  mind  has  in  view  ? 


7 


98 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


I  proceed,  then,  to  enumerate  some  of  these 
other  models  of  community  life  which  the 
internationalist  should  study  ;  not,  indeed,  as 
though  any  one  of  them,  by  itself,  would  provide 
him  with  a  perfect  type  of  what  he  is  seeking, 
but  yet  suggesting  that  each  will  give  him  some 
hint  of  a  working  principle,  and  that,  by  combin¬ 
ing  the  principles  that  he  learns  from  all  of  them, 
he  will  be  able  to  evolve  a  coherent  idea. 

1.  The  Trade  Union,  or  the  Community  of 
Labour. 

2.  The  Friendly  Society,  or  the  Community 
of  Insurance. 

3.  The  University,  or  the  Community  of 
Learning. 

4.  The  Guild  of  Fine  Arts,  or  the  Com¬ 
munity  of  Excellence. 

5.  The  Social  Club,  or  the  Community  of 
Friendship. 

6.  The  Church,  or  the  Community  of  Faith. 

7.  The  Family,  or  the  Community  of  Love. 

« 

8.  The  Political  State,  or  the  Community  of 
Government. 

The  programme  of  internationalism,  as  I 
ask  the  reader  to  conceive  it,  begins  its 
activities  on  lines  suggested  by  the  first  seven 


A  WAY  ROUND 


99 


of  these  models  and  ends  with  the  activities 
suggested  by  the  eighth.  It  differs,  therefore, 
from  the  plans  now  most  in  favour,  not  by  ex¬ 
cluding  political  activity,  but  by  leaving  it  to  the 
last.  It  differs  yet  more  widely  from  the  type 
of  internationalism  which  thinks  exclusively  in 
political  terms  and  is  incapable  of  thinking  in 
any  others.  The  difference  is  one  of  method, 
not  of  aim  or  of  principle.  The  aim  is  still  the 
fraternity  of  the  nations ;  the  principle  is  that 
of  reciprocal  goodwill.  But  the  order  of  pro¬ 
cedure  is  turned  round,  that  being  taken  last 
which  is  usually  taken  first,  and  the  first 
last. 

Let  us,  then,  take  a  glance  at  the  seven 
models  of  community  life — a  glance  only  ;  to 
do  them  full  justice,  a  volume  would  have  to 
be  devoted  to  each. 

1 .  The  Trade  Union ,  or  Community  of  Labour . 
— The  principle  of  trade  unionism  is  collective 
bargaining.  It  suggests  the  extension  and  de¬ 
velopment  of  collective  bargaining  on  inter¬ 
national  lines.  This  process  has  long  been 
recognised  in  commercial  treaties  and  other¬ 
wise,  but  is  capable  of  being  carried  very  much 
further.  The  interchange  of  products  between 


100 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


different  countries,  known  as  import  and  export, 
now  a  most  complicated  and  wasteful  operation, 
might  gradually  be  reduced  to  a  series  of 
summary  bargains  between  the  major  units 
concerned  ;  these  bargains  to  be  conducted  by 
constituted  bodies  in  which  labour  would  be 
represented  along  with  capital,  and  the  con¬ 
sumer  with  the  producer.  For  example,  the 
exchange  of  American  wheat  against  the  manu¬ 
factured  products  of  Manchester  or  Bradford, 
which  now  involves  thousands  of  transactions, 
would  then  be  effected  by  a  relatively  small 
group  of  transactions.  It  would  be  in  principle 
a  collective  bargain  between  American  farmers 
and  English  manufacturers.  The  working  out 
of  such  a  scheme  is,  of  course,  a  problem  for 
expert  science,  as  are  nearly  all  the  other 
matters  to  which  I  shall  refer  ;  but  the  data 
are  actually  in  existence  which  render  a  gradual 
solution  within  the  bounds  of  possibility. 

It  may  be  said  that  we  are  here  on  low  ground, 
that  bargaining  is  a  mercenary  process  which 
should  be  ended  rather  than  mended.  I  should 
be  sorry  to  think  so.  A  sounder  view  is  that 
of  Richard  Cobden,  who  held  that  the  ideal 
bargain  is  one  of  the  most  effective  means  in 


A  WAY  ROUND 


101 


existence  of  reconciling  the  conflicting  interests 
of  men.  A  fraudulent  bargain  is  among  the 
worst  things  in  the  world  ;  an  honest  bargain 
is  among  the  best.  It  marks  the  end  of  a 
conflict  and  the  beginning  of  a  partnership.  It 
is  the  creation  of  a  common  interest  out  of  two 
interests  originally  divergent,  or  at  least  separ¬ 
ate.  Ideal  bargaining  promotes  co-operation, 
and  even  friendship,  between  individuals  and 
between  nations.  The  more  collective  it  be¬ 
comes,  the  more  does  it  approach  its  ideal 
form. 

Great  as  are  the  advances  that  have  been 
made  up  to  date  in  the  art  of  bargaining,  it  still 
remains  susceptible  of  immense  development. 
In  certain  directions  it  has  reached  already  a 
high  degree  of  perfection,  as  in  the  best  practice 
of  banking.  But  even  here  there  are  openings 
for  international  extension.  For  example,  there 
is  no  reason,  none  at  least  in  theory,  why  the 
nations  should  not  create  an  International  Bank, 
which  would  do  for  the  credit  of  all  nations  what 
the  Bank  of  England  does  in  sustaining  the 
credit  of  the  British  Empire.  An  International 
Bank  would  enormously  facilitate  collective 
bargaining  on  a  large  scale,  and  would  be  a  step 


102 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


forward  toward  unity  of  purpose  in  the  general 
life  of  industrial  civilisation. 

2.  l^he  Friendly  Society ,  or  Community  of 
Insurance.1 — The  principle  of  a  community  of 
insurance  is  that  of  bearing  one  another’s 
burdens,  which  most  people  will  agree  has 
something  to  do  with  the  Kingdom  of  God. 
The  characteristics  of  such  a  community — they 
may  be  found  in  any  fire  or  life  insurance 
company — are  that  the  insuring  members  re¬ 
spect  each  other’s  rights,  guard  each  other’s 
property,  and  desire  each  other’s  welfare.  Here 
again  a  number  of  divergent  interests  are  com¬ 
bined  into  a  common  interest.  The  burdens  are 
pooled,  the  risks  are  combined,  and  both  burden 
and  risk  are  so  distributed  as  enormously  to 
diminish  the  hardships  of  human  life.  Imagine 
that  extended  to  the  international  scale — the 
burdens  of  the  nations  so  pooled,  their  risks  so 
combined,  as  to  make  it  the  interest  of  each 
nation  to  respect  the  rights  of  all,  to  guard 
the  property  of  all,  and  to  desire  the  welfare 
of  all.  The  thing  is  not  beyond  the  resources 
of  actuarial  science,  one  of  the  most  highly 
developed  of  the  sciences  ;  and  at  this  point  I 
1  I  owe  all  this  to  the  late  Professor  Royce. 


A  WAY  ROUND 


103 


would  rather  trust  the  fortunes  of  international¬ 
ism  to  the  actuaries,  who  have  a  science,  than 
to  the  politicians,  who  have  none. 

At  the  present  moment,  for  example,  all  the 
nations  engaged  in  the  late  war  are  stagger¬ 
ing  under  an  enormous  burden  of  debt.  For 
some  the  burden  is  so  crushing  that  it  can¬ 
not  be  separately  borne  ;  and  since  in  these 
matters  the  credit  of  all  nations  is  closely  inter¬ 
locked,  the  impending  bankruptcy  of  some 
threatens  the  solvency  of  all.  But  while  many 
of  them  cannot  be  borne  singly,  they  might  con¬ 
ceivably  be  borne  in  common.  Nay,  they  ought 
to  be  borne  in  common — for  reasons  sufficiently 
obvious. 

A  new  community  of  insurance  is  foreshad¬ 
owed — a  Friendly  Society  on  the  international 
scale.  Whether  it  would  deal  first  with  the 
danger  of  bankruptcy,  which  is  the  outstanding 
danger  of  the  world  at  the  moment,  or  with  the 
danger  of  war,  or  with  any  other  of  the  many 
risks  which  the  nations  run  in  common,  need 
not  occupy  us  now.  Enough  that,  if  the  method 
were  applied  to  any  one  of  these  risks,  it  would 
rapidly  extend  to  others  ;  and,  in  so  doing, 
would  spread  a  network  of  equitable,  humane, 


104 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


and  scientifically  exact  relations  over  the  face 
of  the  earth. 

3.  The  University ,  or  Community  of  Learning. 
— The  principle  here  is  the  universality  of  know¬ 
ledge,  the  catholicity  of  truth.  In  the  world 
of  knowledge,  communism  is  a  natural  law. 
Rank,  status,  race,  nationality  count  for  noth¬ 
ing.  Whatever  you  have,  you  give  ;  and  you 
gain  more  by  sharing  it  with  others.  Here 
there  is  no  mine  or  thine,  but  only  mine  and 
thine  ;  for  nothing  is  mine  unless  it  is  thine 
also.  Internationalise  that.  Let  every  uni¬ 
versity  become,  so  far  as  it  can,  what  many 
universities  were  in  bygone  ages,  international. 
Interchange  your  teachers,  interchange  your 
students,  and  see  that  working  men  form  a  large 
part  of  them.  The  universities  of  the  world 
are  for  the  internationalist  a  huge  undeveloped 
estate.  They  are  full  of  possibilities,  pointing 
in  the  direction  of  co-operative  effort,  among 
the  men  of  all  nations,  to  extend  the  field  of 
knowledge,  to  distribute  its  splendid  products, 
and  to  ensure  that  these  shall  be  applied,  not, 
as  they  have  been  so  largely  heretofore,  to 
purposes  of  mutual  destruction,  but  to  the 
promotion  of  the  common  good.  Until  a  seat 


A  WAY  ROUND 


105 


of  learning  has  become  international,  its  claim 
to  be  called  a  university  is  hardly  complete, 
for  it  is  not  universal. 

4.  The  Guild  of  Fine  Arts ,  or  Community  of 
Excellence . — The  principle  here  is  the  value  of 
good  workmanship,  both  for  the  products  it 
yields  and  for  the  education  of  those  who  pro¬ 
duce  them.  What  a  Community  of  Excellence 
sets  out  to  achieve  is  not  quantity,  but  quality. 
There  is  no  reason  why  the  whole  industrial  world , 
this  world  of  factories  and  “goods”  should  not 
become ,  in  its  distant  and  ultimate  issue ,  a  Com¬ 
munity  of  Excellence . 

There  are  two  kinds  of  labour.  There  is  one 
kind  which  is  mere  drudgery,  a  curse,  an  evil 
to  be  compensated  by  wages,  a  thing  of  which 
you  must  say  that  the  less  a  man  has  of  it  the 
better  for  the  man.  This  is  the  kind  which  is 
most  plentiful  in  the  world  at  the  present 
moment,  and  because  there  is  so  much  of 
it  we  have  what  is  known  as  the  “  Labour 
Problem.”  But  there  is  another  kind  which  is 
skilled,  creative  and  delightful,  a  privilege,  an 
education,  a  thing  of  which  the  more  a  man  has 
the  better  for  him.  That  is  true  labour,  that 
is  labour  as  it  should  be,  and  the  greatest  need 


106 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


of  our  times  is  to  foster  and  increase  it,  thereby 
gradually  diminishing  that  other  kind,  which 
is  a  burden  and  a  misfortune  to  all  who  per¬ 
form  it,  no  matter  how  highly  they  may  be  paid 
for  so  doing.  Whenever  a  man  appears  in  any 
nation  who  has  that  aim,  let  him  be  hailed  as  a 
brother  in  arms  by  every  other  man  who  has 
the  same  aim.  Let  all  such  work  together 
across  the  bounds  of  nationality  ;  let  the  inter¬ 
national  labour  movement  concentrate  on  Ex¬ 
cellence,  on  increasing  the  labour  which  is  a 
blessing  and  diminishing  that  which  is  a  curse  ; 
let  them  lay  the  foundations  of  a  world-wide 
Labour  Party,  whose  motto  shall  be,  not,  as 
now,  “  the  minimum  of  work  and  the  maximum 
of  pay,”  but  rather  “  that  every  man  shall  enjoy 
his  day's  work  and  a  good  article  come  out  at  the 
end  of  it .”  Here,  also,  are  immense  possi¬ 
bilities  which  internationalism,  up  to  now,  has 
hardly  touched.  When  nations  or  men  com¬ 
pete  for  quantity,  their  competition  makes 
them  enemies  ;  when  nations  or  men  compete 
for  quality,  their  competition  makes  them 
friends. 

5.  The  Social  Club ,  or  Community  of  Friend¬ 
ship. — The  principle  is  the  value  of  personal 


A  WAY  ROUND 


107 


intercourse  on  common  ground.  The  anti¬ 
thesis  of  the  club  is  the  modern  hotel,  where 
you  are  known,  not  by  your  name,  but  by 
your  number,  and  where  you  may  remain  for 
days  in  close  proximity  to  hundreds  of  other 
44  numbers  ”  similar  to  yourself  without  ex¬ 
changing  one  friendly  word  with  any  one  of  your 
fellow-numbers . 

What  kind  of  international  activity,  then, 
does  the  Social  Club  suggest  ?  Let  no  man 
smile  when  he  hears  the  answer.  It  suggests 
a  reform  of  the  habits  and  conditions  of  modern 
travel.  The  habits  of  the  modern  traveller 
might  have  been  acquired  for  the  express  pur¬ 
pose  of  preventing  men  of  different  nations 
from  getting  to  know  one  another.  I  have 
known  men  who  have  spent  years  in  travelling, 
visiting  half  the  countries  in  the  world,  and 
have  not  made  a  single  friend  in  any  one  of 
them  ;  ignorant  of  any  language  but  their  own, 
and  often  speaking  that  in  a  manner  which  the 
foreign  linguist  cannot  understand  ;  treated  by 
the  inhabitants  of  the  countries  they  passed 
through  as  mere  goods  in  transit,  or  as  peram¬ 
bulating  money-bags  to  be  duly  drained  ;  gazed 
at  as  moving  curiosities  ;  staying  in  hundreds 


1 


108  REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 

of  hotels,  but  never  passing  a  night  under  any 
hospitable  roof ;  foreigners  more  foreign  than  if 
they  had  stayed  at  home. 

I  confess  that  I  know  not  precisely  how  this 
astonishing  evil  is  to  be  remedied.  Perhaps 
the  most  one  can  do,  at  the  moment,  is  to  call 
attention  to  its  existence,  and  thereby  chal¬ 
lenge  the  inventiveness  of  ingenious  minds.  It 
seems  a  vain  thing  to  hope  that  the  old  customs 
of  international  hospitality — as  they  prevailed 
in  the  days  of  Erasmus  and  Colet,  when 
travellers  in  foreign  lands  made  friends  with 
the  people  among  whom  they  travelled — will 
ever  be  revived  in  this  age  of  view-hunting 
and  big  hotels.  But  fancy  sometimes  plays 
with  the  thought  that,  as  civilisation  becomes 
humane  and  intelligent,  the  entertainment  of 
the  foreigner  will  be  recognised  as  a  public 
duty.  If  it  were  possible — I  suppose  it  is  im¬ 
possible,  but  there  is  no  harm  in  playing  with 
these  fancies — to  set  some  movement  on  foot 
which  would  ensure  that  a  friendly  door  should 
always  be  open  to  the  stranger  in  the  com¬ 
munity  he  is  visiting,  and  a  welcome  given 
him  to  some  family  circle,  it  would  do  more  to 
promote  international  understanding  on  both 


A  WAY  ROUND 


109 


sides  than  many  schemes  that  have  been 
portentously  discussed. 

6.  The  Church  is  the  most  important  of  all 
the  non-political  models  of  community  life,  the 
one  that  has  the  closest  bearing  on  our  problem, 
and  at  the  same  time  the  most  difficult  to 
understand  aright. 

In  a  previous  essay  the  point  was  emphasised 
that  whereas  complete  publicity  is  the  mark  of 
shams,  realities  are  never  more  than  partially 
exposed  to  the  public  gaze.  This  quality  of 
hiddenness  reveals  the  true  Church,  and  at  the 
same  time  conceals  it.  No  earthly  institution 
could  better  illustrate  our  principle  that  “  the 
reality  of  things  is  inversely  proportional  to 
the  noisiness  of  their  self-announcement.” 

The  Church  is  the  Community  of  Faith,  and 
the  principle  at  work  within  it  is  the  Spirit. 
It  differs  from  all  the  other  communities  I 
have  named  in  being  essentially  invisible.  No 
visible  embodiment  of  it  on  the  earth  can  do 
more  than  give  a  hint  of  its  true  nature.  Or, 
we  may  say,  the  invisible  part  of  it  must 
always  remain  of  vastly  greater  importance 
than  the  visible.  Neither  in  the  institutions  it 
sets  up,  nor  in  the  dogmas  it  teaches,  nor  in 


110 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


the  ritual  it  follows,  is  the  true  nature  of  the 
Church  fully  revealed.  When  we  hear  it  named, 
we  think  of  sacred  buildings,  of  priesthoods,  of 
doctrines,  of  rites,  of  Sunday  observances,  of 
congregations  saying  their  prayers  or  listening 
to  sermons.  But  the  Church  is  built  on 
deeper  ground  than  that.  It  lies  in  a  world 
which  is  not  only  invisible  now,  but  is  de¬ 
stined  to  remain  invisible  for  ever — the  world 
of  ultimate  Reality,  where  men  are  united 
with  one  another,  not  by  any  outward  bond 
or  formal  compact,  but  by  the  fact  that  each 
in  his  place  and  station  is  loyal  to  the  Highest. 
The  Church  is  the  invisible  community  of  all 
such. 

Of  all  the  ties  that  bind  men  together  this 
is  the  strongest.  Compared  with  this  the 
political  State,  the  League  of  Nations,  nay,  the 
visible  Churches  themselves,  are  things  of  a 
day.  The  members  of  the  invisible  Church 
may  be  unknown  to  one  another  by  face  or  by 
name ;  how  can  it  be  otherwise,  when  they  are 
to  be  counted  by  millions,  and  include  the  dead 
as  well  as  the  living  ?  And  yet  they  are  always 
finding  one  another  out .  Place  them  where  you 
will,  among  Jews  or  Greeks,  bond  or  free, 


A  WAY  ROUND 


111 


circumcision  or  uncircumcision,  these  faithful 
souls  will  reciprocally  discover  one  another, 
and  a  new  link  will  be  forged  in  the  invisible 
bond  which  binds  the  many  into  the  one. 

This  is  the  ultimate  formula  of  international¬ 
ism — to  develop  the  secret  affinities  which  enable 
the  faithful  in  all  nations  to  find  one  another 
out,  and  to  realise  their  community  without 
negotiations,  without  compact,  and  without 
oath.  In  this  sense,  but  in  no  sense  more 
restricted  than  this,  the  Church  is  the  final 
model  of  community  life.  It  includes  and 
explains  all  the  others  of  which  I  have 
spoken.  The  Community  of  Labour,  the 
Community  of  Insurance,  the  Community  of 
Excellence,  the  Community  of  Learning,  the 
Community  of  Friendship,  are  all  means  of 
bringing  mankind  together  on  lower  planes  in 
order  that,  at  the  last,  they  may  find  one 
another  out  in  the  invisible  community  of  faith¬ 
ful  souls.  And  when  this  has  been  done  we 
reach  that  highest  form  of  human  organisation, 
which  is  at  the  same  time  the  simplest,  of  which 
I  shall  only  say  that  it  consists  of  the  Family, 
or  the  Community  of  Love. 


112 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


I  have  been  asking  the  reader  to  exercise  his 
imagination,  and  must  continue  to  do  so.  Let 
him  imagine  the  nations  of  the  world,  or  even 
the  chief  of  them,  engaging  in  the  six  positive 
activities  named  above,  say  for  one  generation. 
Take  one  by  one  the  various  models  of  com¬ 
munity  life  ;  mark  in  each  those  of  its  features 
which  are  capable  of  international  extension, 
and  then  suppose  that  concerted  efforts  are 
being  made  all  round  to  establish  community  of 
labour,  community  of  bargaining,  community  of 
insurance,  community  of  excellence,  community 
of  learning,  community  of  friendship — and  as  the 
last  product  of  them  all,  community  of  faith. 
What  do  we  see  ?  We  see  a  rapid  consolidation 
of  human  interests,  a  continual  drawing  together 
of  mankind  for  a  united  struggle  against  the 
adverse  forces  of  Nature,  and,  therewith,  a 
steady  growth  of  mutual  understanding,  mutual 
respect,  mutual  helpfulness  among  all  nations. 
We  see  the  passing  away  of  innumerable  con¬ 
flicts,  cross-purposes,  and  absurd  misunder¬ 
standings.  We  see,  moreover,  that  an  immense 
process  of  education  is  going  forward — every  one 
of  the  activities  effectively  teaching  some  great 
lesson  of  international  ethics,  the  total  result 


A  WAY  ROUND 


113 


of  which  is  to  train  men,  not  by  ones  or  twos 
or  twenties,  but  by  millions,  to  become  citizens 
of  the  world. 

We  see  something  more  important  still, 
which  touches  vitally  on  what  has  been  said 
about  the  political  State,  or  Community  of 
Government.  I  remarked  at  the  beginning, 
and  would  repeat  at  the  end,  that  with  such 
human  material  as  now  exists  on  this  planet 
the  proposition  of  world  government  is  alto¬ 
gether  unmanageable.  The  intelligence  required 
to  frame  its  constitution,  the  foresight  to  enact 
its  laws,  the  means  to  enforce  the  laws  even  if 
enacted,  do  not  exist.  But  if  we  imagine  the 
nations  pushing  forward  on  the  other  lines, 
following  the  other  models,  we  see  at  the 
same  time  that  this  problem  of  government 
is  gradually  simplifying  itself.  We  are  pre¬ 
paring  the  ground,  we  are  educating  the  human 
material,  we  are  narrowing  the  area  of  possible 
conflict. 

A  league  of  nations,  even  a  partial  league, 

on  political  lines  is  an  enormously  complex 

and  dangerous  affair.  Who  can  doubt  it  ? 

You  may  find  twenty  nations  that  are  willing 

to  set  it  up  ;  but  where  will  you  find  one  that 

8 


114 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


is  honestly  willing  to  submit  to  its  authority 
after  it  has  been  set  up  ?  America  supported 
the  League  as  long  as  the  question  was  merely 
that  of  setting  up  the  new  discipline,  but  as 
soon  as  she  realised  the  precise  discipline  to 
which  she  herself  would  have  to  submit,  she 
withdrew.  In  the  same  manner  every  one  of  the 
other  consenting  Powers  will  withdraw  the  moment 
it  is  called  upon  to  enforce  the  ideal  of  the  League 
against  itself . 

This  alone  is  enough  to  reveal  the  insuper¬ 
able  difficulties  that  arise  when  community  of 
government  is  insisted  on  as  the  first  step 
toward  the  community  life  of  mankind.  But 
the  difficulties  begin  to  vanish  when  we  place 
that  step  at  the  other  end.  I  ask  only  for  one 
generation  of  international  effort  on  the  lines 
indicated  by  the  six  models.  By  the  end  of 
that  time  we  should  have  to  deal  with  a  set 
of  conditions  wholly  different  from  those  which 
now  confront  us.  We  should  have  a  better 
human  material  to  work  upon  ;  new  moral 
forces  would  have  sprung  into  being  ;  the  num¬ 
ber  of  conflicting  interests  to  be  reconciled 
would  have  shrunk.  The  political  measures 
needed  to  secure  the  peace  of  the  world  would 


A  WAY  ROUND 


115 


then  assume  a  relatively  simple  form.  Nay,  we 
might  even  find  that  the  other  unities  which 
had  sprung  into  being  were  so  strong,  and  so 
entirely  pacific  in  their  action,  that  world 
government  was  no  longer  needed  in  any 
shape,  beyond  that  of  a  formal  ratification  of 
existing  fraternities. 

Be  that  as  it  may,  there  can  be  no  doubt 
that  the  non-political  models  of  community 
life  have  immense  value  as  growing-points  of 
international  unity.  I  plead  for  their  im¬ 
portance  and  I  plead  for  their  priority.  It  is 
they  that  provide  a  way  round  that  formidable 
obstacle  of  nationality  which  blocks  the 
way.  It  is  they  that  promise  an  education 
in  international  ethics,  for  want  of  which 
political  internationalism  is  even  now  dashing 
itself  to  pieces.  It  is  they  that  enable  us  to 
counter  the  psychological  causes  of  human 
strife,  and  liberate  the  forces  which  alone 
can  reconcile  them. 

Such  a  mode  of  action  would  betray 
that  blending  of  idealism  and  realism  which 
moves  the  mountains.  Neither  realism  nor 
idealism  taken  separately  will  carry  us  far 
toward  the  goal.  It  is  the  realist  who  bids 


116 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


us  be  content  with  the  present  League  of 
Nations  as  a  beginning.  It  is  the  idealist  who 
asks — the  beginning  of  what  ?  The  two  need 
to  be  combined.  In  combination  they  will  be 
found  irresistible. 


ON  MINDING  ONE’S  OWN 

BUSINESS 

A  person  who  dares,  in  these  days,  to  say 
a  good  word  for  minding  one’s  own  business 
will  find  himself  exposed  to  various  forms  of 
obloquy.  His  neighbours  will  conclude  that 
he  is  a  selfish  man  in  general.  If  he  ventures 
his  plea  in  public,  somebody  will  charge  him 
with  being  an  advocate  of  laissez-faire ,  and  the 
inference  will  be  drawn  that  he  is  not  only 
indifferent  to  the  sufferings  of  his  fellow-men, 
but  idle.  It  will  also  be  hinted  that  he  regards 
himself  as  a  superior  person,  and  mental  pictures 
of  him  will  be  evolved  in  which  he  will  be  re¬ 
presented  as  bidding  the  whole  world  go  to  the 
devil.  Nobody  will  believe  that  he  is  a  good 
citizen  or  a  patriot. 

The  best  citizen,  the  best  patriot  I  ever  knew, 
was  a  man  whose  life  was  fiercely  devoted  to 

117 


118 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


the  principle  of  minding  his  own  business.  I 
have  never  met  a  man  more  industrious,  more 
unselfish,  more  trustworthy.  He  had  thirteen 
children,  who  grew  up  into  stalwart,  sober, 
intelligent  and  self-respecting  men  and  women, 
every  one  contributing  necessary  service  to  the 
world  at  this  moment ;  five  married  and 
mothers  of  large  families,  the  rest  doing  skilled 
work  in  factories  or  tilling  the  land.  The  man 
was  a  shepherd,  and  his  regular  wages  were 
eighteen  shillings  a  week.  To  be  sure  he 
never  talked  either  about  citizenship  or 
patriotism  ;  but  he  did  the  thing  the  rest  of  us 
talk  about.  He  neither  interfered  with  other 
people,  nor  would  he  allow  them  to  interfere 
with  him.  Because  he  wanted  to  mind  his  own 
business,  that  of  breeding  sheep,  he  insisted  on 
being  left  alone.  And  he  left  others  alone,  thus 
doing  unto  them  precisely  as  he  would  they 
should  do  unto  him.  Taken  on  his  own  terms, 
he  was  agreeable  enough  and  interesting  beyond 
measure.  He  was  excellent  company,  and 
deeply  religious.  But  if  you  interfered  with 
him,  especially  if  you  showed  the  least  desire  to 
improve  him  or  do  him  good,  he  would  turn 
his  back  and  walk  away  in  wrath. 


ON  MINDING  ONE’S  OWN  BUSINESS  119 


If  all  men  were  like  him  it  would  be  im¬ 
possible  for  anybody  to  do  good  to  anybody 
else — except,  of  course,  in  secret,  which  is  the 
way  the  Bible  says  it  ought  to  be  done.  But  in 
that  case — if  everybody  minded  his  own  busi¬ 
ness  as  this  shepherd  did — doing  them  good  in 
ways  that  were  not  secret  would  often  be  un¬ 
necessary.  The  reason  we  have  to  do  so  much 
good  in  public,  to  pass  so  many  public  laws,  and 
to  make  so  many  public  speeches,  is  always,  in 
the  last  resort,  that  somebody  is  not  minding  his 
own  business.  It  is  a  rather  humiliating  state 
of  things,  and  suggests  that  life  moves  in  a 
vicious  circle.  Smith  causes  trouble  by  not 
minding  his  own  business  ;  then  Jones  has  to 
neglect  his  in  order  to  set  right  the  trouble 
caused  by  Smith  ;  and  then  Robinson  has  to 
leave  his  counter  in  order  to  straighten  things 
up  in  Jones’s  shop — and  so  it  goes  on.  Hence 
it  is  that  our  morals,  politics,  and  social  reforms 
have  much  in  them  to  remind  us  of  the  process 
by  which  the  men  of  Gotham  earned  their 
livelihood — they  took  in  one  another’s  washing. 
It  is  clear  that  if  everybody  would  wash  his 
own  clothes  there  would  be  a  general  sauve  qui 
pent  among  the  moralists,  politicians,  and  social 


120 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


reformers.  Their  occupation  would  be  largely 
gone,  and  they  would  be  reduced  to  the  neces¬ 
sity  of  having  to  do  good  in  secret,  which  some 
of  them  would  find  uncongenial  to  their  habits. 

Good  citizenship,  patriotism,  and,  indeed, 
Christianity  itself  were  not  well  served  when 
“  doing  good  to  others  ”  became  the  war-cry 
of  moralists.  These  moralists  meant  well, 
but  they  did  harm.  What  they  meant  to 
do,  of  course,  was  to  promote  good  works 
all  round,  in  which  no  doubt  they  have 
succeeded — to  some  extent.  But,  incidentally, 
they  caused  a  new  division  of  classes — that, 
namely,  between  the  people  who  fancy  it  their 
mission  to  do  good,  and  the  “  others  ”  to  whom 
good  is  done.  Without  intending  it,  they  set 
up  a  small  aristocracy,  which  called  itself 
“  we,”  and  at  the  same  time  they  created  (in 
imagination)  an  enormous  moral  proletariat 
known  as  “  others.”  Any  man  who  wants  to 
neglect  his  own  business  can  now  press  the 
claim  that  he  is  one  of  the  “  others  ”  whose 
business  ought  to  be  minded  for  them  by 
somebody  else.  That  is  the  attitude  of  the 
public  towards  the  Government.  “  You,”  say 
the  public,  addressing  the  Government,  “  re- 


ON  MINDING  ONE’S  OWN  BUSINESS  121 


present  the  moral  aristocracy,  who  mind  other 
people’s  business.  Behold  us,  then,  who  are 
the  4  others  5  in  question.  Do  us  good.  Mind 
our  business — for  we  are  disinclined  to  mind 
it  ourselves.  Educate  our  children.  Regulate 
our  wages.  Insure  us  against  poverty.  Fix 
prices.  Compel  us  to  behave  ourselves  decently. 
Put  policemen  at  every  street  corner.” 

It  is  not  wholesome  for  any  man  to  think  of 
himself  as  one  of  the  44  we  ”  who  do  good  to 
others  ;  he  is  apt  to  become  a  Pharisee  without 
knowing  it.  Nor  is  it  better  for  him,  but 
worse,  if  he  think  of  himself  as  one  of  the 
4  6  others  ”  to  whom  good  is  done  ;  he  will 
almost  certainly  fall  into  the  habit  of  neglecting 
his  own  business,  especially  if  it  happens  to  be 
difficult.  Most  of  us,  it  will  be  found,  un¬ 
consciously  place  ourselves  in  one  or  other  of 
these  two  classes.  Or  rather,  we  transfer  our¬ 
selves  from  the  first  to  the  second  and  vice  versa , 
according  to  the  convenience  of  the  moment. 
If  the  business  we  are  engaged  in  is  pleasant 
and  costs  nothing — such  as  public  agitation, 
speech-making,  devising  schemes  of  social  re¬ 
construction — the  tendency  is  to  place  ourselves 
among  the  “  we  ”  who  go  about  doing  good. 


122 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


If  it  is  unpleasant,  or  arduous,  or  requires 
abstinence,  care,  forethought  and  self-sacrifice 
— such  as  properly  educating  our  children  or 
protecting  ourselves  from  poverty  in  old  age — 
our  tendency  is  to  let  the  business  drift  and 
wait  till  the  State  steps  in  and  takes  it  off  our 
hands  :  we  now  belong  to  the  44  others  ”  to 
whom  good  is  done. 

One  may  see  this  curious  process  actively  at 
work  in  the  discussion  about  education.  The 
assumption  on  which  it  proceeds  is  that  there 
exists  in  die  community  a  comparatively  small 
class  of  persons  (“  we  ”)  whose  part  is  to 
educate,  and  an  enormous  multitude  of  persons 
(44  the  others  ”)  whose  part  is  to  be  educated  in 
the  manner  which  44  we  ”  consider  best.  Every¬ 
one  who  has  a  scheme  to  propose  uncon¬ 
sciously  reckons  himself  a  member  of  the  small 
aristocracy  represented  by  the  first  class ; 
rarely,  indeed,  do  you  encounter  an  educational 
reformer  who  shows  the  faintest  suspicion  of 
his  own  need  to  be  educated.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  great  mass  of  the  public  is  so  accus¬ 
tomed  to  be  treated  in  this  way  that  it  doesn’t 
bother  its  head  about  education  at  all.  It 
leaves  the  whole  business,  which  is  really  its 


ON  MINDING  ONE’S  OWN  BUSINESS  123 


own,  to  be  looked  after  by  44  we  ”  ;  though  it 
is  not  unlikely  that  when  “  we  ”  have  made 
their  arrangements  the  public  will  discover 
that  it  has  been  unwarrantably  interfered  with, 
and  will  repudiate  the  arrangements  u  we  ” 
have  made.  That  is  bad  for  both  parties. 

As  happens  so  often,  the  moralists,  with  their 
cry  of  44  do  good  to  others,”  have  got  hold  of 
the  stick,  but  by  the  wrong  end.  The  most 
effectual  way  of  doing  good  to  others  is  to  mind 
your  own  business — the  most  effectual,  but  the 
least  showy,  for  there  is  nothing  in  it  to  in¬ 
dicate  to  the  passers-by  that  you  are  a  phil¬ 
anthropist.  Your  conduct  will  commend  itself 
only  to  those  who  honour  good  done  in  secret. 
Assuredly,  there  is  no  form  of  44  social  service  ” 
comparable  to  that  which  one  can  render  by 
doing  his  job  to  the  very  best  of  his  ability. 
And,  contrariwise,  the  enemies  of  society 
are  those  who  scamp  their  jobs,  no  matter 
whether  the  cause  be  idleness,  stupidity,  selfish¬ 
ness,  or  the  benevolent  desire  to  spend  one’s 
time  in  looking  after  the  interests  of  other 
people. 

One  often  wonders  what  the  world  would  be 
like  at  the  present  moment  if  civilisation  had 


124 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


been  grounded  from  the  first  on  the  law  of 
44  mind  your  own  business,”  with  less  said  about 
doing  good  to  others.  I  cannot  but  believe 
that  we  should  be  living  in  a  far  better  world. 
There  would  be  less  idleness,  less  inefficiency, 
less  ugliness,  less  dirt,  less  shoddy,  and,  above 
all,  less  humbug — less,  in  short,  of  everything 
which  darkens  the  future  of  mankind.  The 
curse  of  bad  work — the  root  of  the  labour 
problem — would  never  have  lighted  on  our 
civilisation.  There  might  not  be  so  many 
marketable  commodities  in  the  world,  but  what 
there  were  would  be  worth  far  more.  We 
should  be  doing  each  other  more  good  than  we 
can  ever  hope  to  do  by  all  that  is  commonly 
comprised  under  44  social  service.”  We  should 
entertain  a  higher  respect  for  our  neighbours  ; 
for  there  is  nothing  that  makes  you  despise  a 
man  so  completely  as  the  sight  of  him  scamp¬ 
ing  his  job.  We  should  be  more  united,  more 
sociable,  more  unselfish,  and  more  willing  to 
pull  together.  And  the  Great  War  would  never 
have  taken  place.  Germany  had  never  learnt^ 
to  mind  her  own  business  and  to  leave  other 
nations  to  mind  theirs.  She  claimed  the  right 
to  impose  her  culture  on  the  rest  of  the  world 


ON  MINDING  ONE’S  OWN  BUSINESS  125 


without  consulting  it,  which  is  precisely  what 
some  educational  reformers  do  when  they  take 
the  44  uneducated  masses  ”  in  hand.  In  fact, 
Prussian  militarism  sought  to  carry  out  on  the 
international  scale,  and  to  its  logical  conclusion, 
the  mistake  we  all  commit  when  we  grasp  the 
principle  of  doing  good  to  others  by  the  wrong 
end. 

I  contend,  therefore,  that  the  obloquy  is 
undeserved  which  falls  upon  the  man  who 
believes  in  minding  his  own  business.  He  is  not 
an  idle  person  ;  he  works  longer  hours  than  his 
opponent,  and  produces  a  better  article.  He 
is  not  indifferent  to  the  welfare  of  others  ;  he 
does  them  good  in  secret  all  day  long.  He  is 
not  a  superior  person  who  bids  the  whole  world 
go  to  the  devil ;  he  sees  it  going  to  the  devil 
under  the  influence  of  the  opposite  principle 
and  tries  to  save  it  by  sticking  to  his  post.  He 
is  not  a  selfish  man  ;  he  is  the  true  philan¬ 
thropist,  though  he  never  seeks  the  reputation 
of  being  one,  and  greatly  dislikes  hearing  him- 
‘self  called  by  that  name.  He  doesn’t  practise 
'  laissez-faire ;  he  leaves  that  to  the  people  who 
neglect  their  own  business  under  the  pretext  of 
doing  good  to  others.  He  is  not  a  troublesome 


126 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


member  of  the  community ;  he  gives  less 
trouble  than  anybody  else,  and  at  the  same 
time  performs  more  social  service  than  any¬ 
body  else.  His  job  is  not  the  easiest ;  it  is  the 
hardest,  but  he  makes  no  fuss  about  it  and 
seldom  complains.  Taking  him  all  round,  he 
is  the  best  of  good  fellows — staunch,  neigh¬ 
bourly,  cheerful,  healthy  -  minded,  unpreten¬ 
tious — a  pillar  of  society  in  every  sense  of  the 
term,  an  excellent  citizen  and  a  true  patriot. 
To  be  sure,  he  is  disagreeable  when  he  finds 
himself  in  the  midst  of  talking  men,  especially 
if  they  are  talking  about  social  service  ;  but, 
otherwise,  you  will  find  him  the  most  pleasant 
of  companions,  and  be  very  glad  to  have  him 
as  a  neighbour.  He,  at  all  events,  is  no  sham. 


A  SOLILOQUY  ON  VOTING 

The  discovery  that  voting  is  a  better  method  of 
settling  disputes  than  fighting  is  considered  the 
peculiar  achievement  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race. 
Unfortunately  it  has  led  to  the  notion  that  the 
settlement  of  disputes  is  the  essential  business 
of  human  life,  until,  in  course  of  time,  disputing, 
or,  as  we  say,  discussion,  has  itself  come  to  be 
regarded  as  the  most  important  occupation  of 
man.  But  the  best  things  of  life  are  not  attained 
by  disputes  nor  by  settling  them.  They  are 
attained  in  amicable  fellowship,  by  the  exercise 
of  common  sense,  kind  feeling,  a  nd  good  manners 
— to  which  perhaps  may  be  added  the  thing 
called  44  genius  ” — though  this  is  only  a  rare  form 
of  common  sense.  They  are  such  things  as  art, 
beauty,  joy,  friendship,  self-respect,  family 
affection  and  the  love  of  man  and  woman — 
matters  in  which  voting  is  out  of  the  question. 

Even  as  a  mode  of  settling  disputes  the  vote 

127 


128 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


does  not  possess  the  virtues  commonly  ascribed 
to  it.  For  each  dispute  which  it  enables  us 
to  settle  it  causes  many  more.  Most  of  the 
quarrels  which  absorb  our  intelligence,  or  drain 
it  away  from  far  more  important  matters,  turn 
precisely  on  the  question  of  what  we  are  to  do 
with  our  votes.  True,  we  are  enabled  by  the 
vote  to  carry  on  these  quarrels  without  the 
shedding  of  blood,  except,  as  Carlyle  said,  for 
a  little  from  the  nose  at  election  times.  But 
the  absence  of  blood  from  our  quarrels  does  not 
prove  that  the  quarrels  are  good  for  us,  nor 
that  we  are  well  advised  in  spending  on  them 
the  energies  that  are  needed  for  greater  things. 

The  fighting  cult  and  the  voting  cult  have 
this  in  common,  that  they  both  attach  exagger¬ 
ated  importance  to  the  settlement  of  disputes, 
the  Sword  or  the  Vote  being  the  rival  instru¬ 
ments  for  achieving  this.  The  cults  further 
resemble  one  another  in  producing,  by  over¬ 
emphasis  on  their  respective  industries,  a  grave 
neglect  of  common  sense,  kind  feeling  and 
good  manners.  That  this  is  so,  few  persons 
would  deny  in  regard  to  the  fighting  cult ;  that 
the  voting  cult  works  in  a  similar  manner  we 
may  presently  come  to  see.  Whichever  method 


VOTING 


129 


adopt,  we  multiply  quarrels,  with  bloodshed 
or  without  —  which  latter  is  generally,  but 
not  always,  the  lesser  of  the  two  evils.  When 
this  has  been  widely  recognised  we  shall  per¬ 
haps  turn  our  attention  to  devising  some  form 
of  the  common  life  in  which  disputes  are  less 
likely  to  occur  in  the  first  instance — a  proposal 
pointing  to  a  regime  of  common  sense,  kind 
feeling  and  good  manners,  combined  with  a 
minimum  of  voting. 

There  was  a  time  when  everyone  who  fancied 
himself  a  man  carried  a  sword  or  a  cudgel. 
Nowadays  everybody  who  fancies  himself  a 
man  (or  a  woman)  claims  a  vote.  The  swords 
and  the  cudgels  have  been  given  up.  Will  the 
votes  follow  suit  ? 

For  the  present  there  seems  no  prospect  of 

this.  The  tendency  of  our  time  is  in  the 

opposite  direction.  There  are  many,  indeed, 

who  resist  further  extensions  of  the  franchise, 

but  I  have  never  yet  heard  of  anybody  who 

would  voluntarily  relinquish  his  own.  On  the 

whole,  so  far  as  one  can  see,  the  extension  of 

the  franchise  is  bound  to  go  on  to  its  limit. 

And  this  is  a  thing  to  be  desired,  especially  by 

those  who  are  heretics  in  respect  of  the  voting 

9 


130 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


cult.  The  comparative  insignificance  of  the 
vote  as  an  instrument  of  human  progress  will 
never  be  fully  realised  until  everybody  who 
wants  it  gets  it.  For  this  reason  the  heretic 
welcomes  the  accession  of  women  to  the 
electorate,  though  he  feels  they  are  worthy  of 
something  better,  and  is  disposed  to  apologise 
for  the  meanness  of  the  gift.  Nothing  has 
tended  more  to  maintain  the  inflated  reputa¬ 
tion  of  the  vote  than  the  refusal  of  it  to  women. 
Many  have  thought  that  women,  on  being 
enfranchised,  would  be  the  first  to  realise  how 
inflated  a  reputation  it  has.  They  have  always 
been  the  superiors  of  men  in  the  three  qualities 
which  are  the  main  sources  of  human  progress 
— common  sense,  kind  feeling,  good  manners — 
and  on  discovering,  as  they  soon  would  do,  the 
deadly  blight  which  44  politics  ”  cast  on  these 
things,  they  might  raise  an  outcry  that  would 
bring  us  all  to  our  senses.  This  expectation 
has  not  yet  been  fulfilled,  but  perhaps  it  will 
be  hereafter. 

At  all  events,  it  is  instructive  to  ask  our¬ 
selves  whether  votes  are  really  worth  the  fuss 
we  make  about  them.  We  might  reflect 
on  all  the  great  achievements  of  mankind 


VOTING 


131 


which  have  not  been  accomplished  by  means 
of  the  vote — for  example,  the  Bible,  the  Par¬ 
thenon,  the  Greek  Drama,  Roman  Law,  the 
Catholic  Church,  the  Divine  Comedy,  the  Dis¬ 
covery  of  America,  Shakespeare’s  Sonnets,  the 
Invention  of  the  Printing  Press  and  Steam- 
engine,  the  French  Revolution  and  the  Popula¬ 
tion  of  the  Globe  ;  and  then  side  by  side  with 
these  we  might  make  out  a  list  of  the  mighty 
works  of  the  vote ;  finally  asking  ourselves 
which  of  the  two  achievements  is  better  worth 
the  trouble  bestowed  upon  it.  How  little  of 
what  gives  lasting  value  to  life  is  due  to  the 
voting  industry,  and  how  much  to  common 
sense,  kind  feeling,  good  manners  and  their 
like ;  and  again,  how  much  that  has  the 
contrary  effect  of  making  life  a  burden  has 
been  voted  into  existence  by  people  who  were 
deficient  in  those  admirable  qualities !  From 
this  it  would  be  a  short  step  to  the  conclusion 
that  the  over-emphasis  we  have  placed  on  the 
vote  is  responsible  in  no  small  measure  for  the 
present  deplorable  decadence  of  the  arts  and 
for  the  singular  dearth  of  great  men  in  the 
modern  world. 

The  arts  wither  because  the  life,  the  energy, 


132 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


the  faith  they  require  are  all  drained  off  into 
politics,  debating  societies  and  legislation.  Yet 
politics,  debating  societies  and  legislation,  even 
at  their  best,  will  never  confer  upon  mankind 
one  tithe  of  the  happiness  that  comes  from  the 
creation  of  beauty.  This  is  one  of  the  most 
certain  of  truths.  The  voting  cult  forbids  men 
to  believe  it,  and  if  they  do  believe  it  treats 
them  as  faddists.  What  chance  have  the 
arts  in  such  an  atmosphere  ?  As  to  the  great 
men,  how  can  they  survive  when  every  little 
man  holds  a  public  licence  to  put  them  down  ? 
What  spectacle  more  tragic  than  that  of  a  man 
with  a  great  soul  being  voted  upon  by  a  crowd 
of  men  with  little  souls  !  It  is  at  such  moments 
that  we  hesitate  in  deciding  whether  fighting 
or  voting  has  done  more  harm  to  mankind. 
The  fighters  kill  the  body  ;  but  the  voters  kill 
the  soul. 

“An  education  which  shall  train  the  citizen 
in  the  right  use  of  his  vote.”  Yes  :  but  let  it 
train  him  also  in  the  right  use  of  his  fingers, 
his  senses,  his  whole  body,  his  wits  and  his 
immortal  soul.  Why  should  “the  use  of  his 
vote  ”  be  given  priority  to  these  things  ? 


“OLD  EDDY” 


The  old  political  economy,  it  will  be  remem¬ 
bered,  was  largely  occupied  with  the  melan¬ 
choly  doings  of  a  person  called  44  the  economic 
man,”  who  bought  in  the  cheapest  market, 
sold  in  the  dearest,  and  apparently  did  nothing 
else.  It  is  now  generally  admitted  that  this 
person  does  not  exist. 

Contemporary  politics  have  achieved  an  even 
finer  abstraction  in  the  idea  of  the  44  voting 
man,”  who  listens  to  the  speeches  of  the  gentle¬ 
man  he  is  asked  to  vote  for,  records  his  vote, 
and  so  fulfils  the  object  of  his  existence.  This 
is  the  conception  of  humanity  adopted  in  all 
the  schools  of  electioneering.  44  A  man  ”  and 
44  a  voter  ”  mean  the  same  thing.  So,  too, 
with  44  a  woman.”  Just  as  in  the  old  political 
economy  there  was  no  difference  between  an 
44  economic  man  ”  and  an  44  economic  woman,” 
so  in  the  philosophy  of  electioneering  there  is  no 

133 


134 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


difference  between  a  voting  man  and  a  voting 
woman.  Each  counts  for  one.  If  you  add  a 
voting  man  to  a  voting  woman  you  get  two — 
precisely  the  same  result  as  if  both  were  men 
or  both  women.  You  listen  to  the  speeches  and 
you  vote — and  that,  so  far  as  the  electioneer  is 
concerned,  is  the  essence  of  your  humanity, 
whether  you  be  man  or  whether  you  be 
woman. 

The  public  seems  content  to  take  pretty 
much  the  same  view  of  itself.  I  have  heard  it 
said  in  so  many  words  that  “  no  one  can  be 
a  man  in  the  full  sense  of  the  term  until  he 
exercises  the  vote.”  And  of  course  the  same 
has  been  said  mutatis  mutandis  about  women. 
In  all  of  which  one  hears  a  faint  echo  of  the 
fundamental  article  in  the  electioneering  creed 
— that  the  voting  man  is  the  real  man,  all  other 
forms  of  his  humanity  being  mere  shadows  of 
his  true  self,  or  earlier  stages  of  its  evolution. 
You  may  be  a  father  or  a  mother,  a  saint,  a 
philosopher,  an  artist,  a  poet,  but  your  human¬ 
ity  is  not  complete  until  it  votes .  In  that 
dramatic  moment  you  get  to  real  business  and 
pay  down  your  contribution  to  the  life  of  the 
age,  not  in  airy  nothings,  such  as  beauty,  or 


“OLD  EDDY  ” 


135 


joy,  or  love,  but  in  current  coin,  in  hard  cash. 
There  is  indeed  only  one  condition  higher  than 
that  of  the  man  who  votes.  It  is  the  condition 
of  the  man  who  is  voted  for .  And  even  he  is 
voted  for  only  that  he  may  vote  again  on  your 
behalf.  Were  a  prophet  to  appear  among  us 
and  declare  that  in  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven 
men  neither  vote  nor  are  voted  for,  nobody 
would  vote  for  him. 

And  yet  this  voting  man,  between  whom  and 
the  voting  woman  there  is,  as  I  have  said,  no 
difference  at  all,  does  not  exist.  Like  his 
economic  counterpart  he  is  an  abstraction,  or, 
if  you  will,  a  fiction  of  the  electioneering 
imagination.  This  is  proved  by  the  daily 
practice  of  the  electioneers,  who  add  him  up 
into  majorities  and  minorities  of  so  many 
thousands.  Were  the  voting  man  a  real 
human  being  you  couldn’t  add  him  into  a 
total  of  one  kind  or  another ;  and  the  fact 
that  he  is  so  added  proves  beyond  all  gain¬ 
saying  that  he  neither  breathes,  nor  feels,  nor 
thinks.  Of  all  ghosts  he  is  the  thinnest. 

It  is  a  hard  saying  in  this  statistical  age,  but 
as  true  as  it  is  hard,  that  under  no  circum¬ 
stances  whatever  can  human  beings,  real  men 


136 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


or  real  women,  be  added  up.  You  can  add 
things  up  only  when  they  are  exact  duplicates 
of  one  another.  A  foot  could  not  be  added  to 
a  yard  unless  we  knew  that  a  yard  was  three 
feet.  “  One  yard  one  foot  ”  means  four  feet, 
all  exactly  like  one  another.  But  no  man  is 
exactly  like  any  other  man.  Four  men  are 
not  four  times  one  man  ;  and  the  moment  you 
treat  them  as  though  they  were  you  may  be 
quite  certain  that  they  are  not  real  men  you 
are  thinking  about.  If  ten  men  see  pink,  that 
is  not  the  same  as  one  man  seeing  red.  If 
twenty  thousand  men  are  suffering  at  the  same 
time  from  toothache,  the  result  of  that  is  not 
a  single  toothache  twenty  thousand  strong.  If 
a  million  men  think  the  Kaiser  ought  to  be 
hanged,  the  result  of  that  is  not  an  opinion  in 
favour  of  the  hanging  a  million  times  as  wise 
and  weighty  as  if  only  one  man  had  thought  so. 
If  the  whole  million  vote  for  the  hanging,  what 
the  Kaiser  has  against  him  is  not  a  million 
opinions  but  a  million  votes ;  and  if  the 
million  voters  happen  to  be  foolish,  the 
“  opinions  ”  of  the  whole  lot  carry  no  more 
weight  than  the  single  foolish  opinion  of  any 
one  of  them. 


137 


“  OLD  EDDY” 

Men  and  women  alike,  each  of  us  wishes  to 
count  for  somebody,  and  this  desire  to  count 
and  be  counted  seems  to  be  fulfilled  when  we 
44  receive  the  vote  ”  and  are  permitted  to  take 
our  places  in  the  vast  addition  sum  of  the 
nation’s  voting  power.  It  is  an  illusion.  In 
the  addition  sum  you  do  not  count  for  some¬ 
body.  You  count  and  are  counted  as  a  unit  in 
a  mass.  You  and  I  are  never  further  off  from 
being  44  somebody  ”  than  when  our  votes  are 
counted  at  the  end  of  the  poll.  All  differences 
of  personality — and  it  is  these  that  make  a 
44  somebody  ” — are  wiped  out  as  by  a  magician’s 
wand  ;  nobody  is  anybody  ;  everybody  is  just 
one ,  and  each  “one”  is  the  exact  duplicate  of 
every  other.  In  the  Voters’  Paradise,  where 
there  are  as  many  votes  as  there  are  human 
beings,  and  every  question  is  voted  on  the  in¬ 
stant  it  is  raised,  personality  counts  for  nothing 
at  all. 

This  explains  the  uncomfortable  suspicion 
many  of  us  have  in  these  days,  that  as  Govern¬ 
ment  becomes  more  44  representative  ”  it  repre¬ 
sents  us  less  and  less.  The  truth  is,  that  by 
reducing  us  all  to  the  dead  level  of  voting 
units  it  deprives  us  of  everything  in  our  nature 


138 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


which  is  most  worthy  to  be  represented. 
Hence  an  incessant  quarrel  between  the  public 
and  the  politicians.  “You  are  treating  us,” 
cries  the  angry  public,  through  the  leader  in  the 
Times ,  44  as  though  we  were  nobody .  We  asked 
you  for  bread,  and  you  have  given  us  a  stone.” 
44  On  the  contrary,”  the  politicians  reply,  44  we 
are  trusting  the  people — trusting  them  to  agree 
with  us  when  we  have  explained  ourselves.” 
44  Explain  yourselves  forthwith,”  say  the  people. 
44  Well,  then,”  comes  the  answer,  44  what  you 
mean  by  4  bread  ’  is  what  we  mean  by  4  stone,5 
and  vice  versa .  You  have  got  what  you  asked, 
and  we  trust  you  to  see  it.”  Which  means  in 
plain  language  that  what  these  gentlemen 
really  trust  is  not  the  people  but  the  formulae 
under  which  electioneering  science  predicts  the 
probable  behaviour  of  the  massed  nobodies 
called  voters.  And  the  odd  thing  is,  that  in 
all  this  the  electioneer  honestly  believes  him¬ 
self  to  be  trusting  human  nature.  He  is 
ignoring  it  altogether.  This  is  one  of  the  penal¬ 
ties  we  have  to  pay  for  the  conception  which 
reduces  man  to  the  dimensions  of  a  being  who 
votes  and  is  counted — the  conception  which  lies 
at  the  base  of  electioneering.  One. begins  to 


“  OLD  EDDY  ” 


139 


understand  why  King  David  got  into  trouble 
for  counting  the  people. 

The  disappointment  of  the  people  on  dis¬ 
covering  that  their  votes,  which  they  hoped 
would  make  them  “  somebodies,”  reduce  them 
to  units  in  a  mass,  to  be  dealt  with  by  election¬ 
eering  operations,  is  perhaps  better  understood 
if  we  consider  the  second  of  the  abstractions  I 
have  named— the  man  voted  for.  Theoretically 
the  man  voted  for  is  the  sum  total  of  the  voting 
men  who  form  his  constituency.  As  the  voting 
men  have  reduced  themselves  to  nobodies  by 
becoming  units  in  a  mass,  so  the  man  voted  for 
is,  in  theory,  only  a  bigger  or  totalised  nobody 
of  the  same  type — a  purely  impersonal  force. 
In  reality  he  is  nothing  of  the  kind.  The 
moment  comes  when  the  voters  discover  to 
their  dismay  that  the  very  process  which  has 
made  them  nobodies  has  made  him  somebody. 
They  elected  him  to  play  the  part  of  an  answer 
to  an  addition  sum,  and  to  add  and  subtract 
himself  from  other  answers  similarly  arrived  at ; 
but,  lo  and  behold  !  he  turns  out  to  be  an  in¬ 
genious  human  being  and  as  incalculable  as  he 
is  ingenious.  Ten  thousand  voting  men  have 
seen  pink ;  and  the  ten  thousand  pinks  when 


140 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


added  together  into  the  man  they  have  voted 
for  will  make,  assuredly,  one  blazing  red.  What, 
therefore,  is  the  amazement  of  the  voting  men 
when,  on  opening  their  papers  one  morning, 
they  learn  that  the  man  voted  for  has  seen 
neither  pink  nor  red  but  green  !  For  example, 
the  Turks  who  were  to  be  expelled  from  Con¬ 
stantinople  are  kept  there  by  the  very  men  who 
were  elected  to  expel  them.  How  has  that  come 
about  ?  It  has  come  about  because  the  man 
voted  for  is  an  ingenious  “  somebody  ” ;  while 

the  men  who  voted  for  him  are  units  in  a  mass. 

* 

Years  ago,  in  the  time  of  the  School  Boards, 
I  knew  a  farmer,  an  ignorant  and  violent 
man,  who  was  never  tired  of  declaiming  on 
the  theme  that  “  education  was  ruining  the 
country.”  His  fondness  for  this  line  of 
argument  gained  him  the  local  nickname  of 
44  Old  Eddy,”  or,  more  ceremoniously,  44  Old 
Eddication.”  In  taverns,  at  market,  by  the 
roadside,  by  his  own  hearth,  or  wherever  he 
could  find  a  listener,  the  odds  were  great  that 
44  Eddy  ”  would  come  to  the  point  within  five 
minutes  of  the  opening  of  conversation  ;  and 
some  of  the  sporting  gentlemen  in  our  parish 
used  to  make  bets  about  it. 


“  OLD  EDDY  ” 


141 


There  were  other  farmers  in  the  neighbour¬ 
hood  who  shared  Eddy’s  views.  Moreover,  his 
constant  talk  about  education  had  given  him 
a  reputation  among  the  ignorant  as  an  expert 
on  the  subject.  He  had  therefore  a  44  party  ” 
behind  him,  and  it  was  no  surprise  when  in 
due  course  he  got  himself  elected  on  the  local 
School  Board.  Meeting  him  one  day,  I  ventured 
to  ask  what  44  policy  ”  he  intended  to  pursue  in 
his  new  capacity.  44  I  am  going  to  do  my 
best,”  he  said,  44  to  put  a  stopper  on  this  ’ere 
eddication.”  44  But  did  you  tell  the  electors 
that  ?  ”  I  asked.  44  Not  me  !  ”  he  answered. 
44 1  kept  that  to  myself  while  the  elections  were 
on  and  put  up  another  tune.  But  now  I’m  in 
and  they  can’t  get  me  out” 

There  are  few  public  bodies  in  the  world, 
from  national  parliaments  to  parish  councils, 
on  which  Old  Eddy  and  his  like  are  not  more 
or  less  active.  In  local  government  the  thing 
is  notorious.  Hardly  one  of  our  local  bodies 
but  contains  a  sprinkling,  and  perhaps  more 
than  a  sprinkling,  of  these  secret  diplomatists, 
who  have  put  up  one  44 tune”  or  another  to 
the  electors,  but  whose  real  design  is  to  44  put 
a  stopper  ”  on  some  plan,  housing  or  the  like, 


142 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


which  the  local  body  was  created  to  carry  out. 
In  many  of  the  cities  of  America  the  Old  Eddies 
are  practically  masters  of  the  situation.  But 
in  this  country  also  it  is  often  painfully  manifest 
that  all  we  can  get  in  the  way  of  reform  is 
subject  to  their  approval.  One  may  even  con¬ 
jecture  that  the  war  was  made  by  Old  Eddies 
of  one  nationality  or  another.  At  all  events, 
only  a  blind  man  can  fail  to  see  that  they  had 
a  finger  in  the  making  of  peace.  Of  the  League 
of  Nations  it  is  as  yet  too  soon  to  speak,  but 
there  are  ominous  indications  that  Old  Eddy  is 
looking  out  for  his  chance. 

Democracy  with  all  its  inventions  has  not 
yet  found  a  means  of  protecting  itself  against 
him  and  his  ways.  On  the  contrary,  it  has  pro¬ 
vided  him  with  immense  opportunities,  and 
even  tempted  him  with  the  prospect  of  lucra¬ 
tive  employment.  He  is  another  lion  in  the 
path.  Whosoever  would  make  the  world  safe 
for  democracy  must  first  find  a  means  of 
sending  Old  Eddy  to  the  rightabout. 


THE  POWER  OF  THE  PEOPLE 


In  what  does  the  44  power  of  the  people  ”  con¬ 
sist,  and  how  can  we  ascertain  whether  it  is  on 
the  increase  or  on  the  wane  ? 

We  might  begin  with  statistics  of  population 
and  wealth.  But  these  by  themselves  prove 
nothing.  A  community  may  increase  in  popu¬ 
lation  and  yet  become  degenerate ;  it  may 
increase  in  wealth  and  become  corrupt.  As 
everybody  knows,  the  Roman  Empire  was  losing 
power  at  the  very  time  when  it  was  increasing 
in  population  and  in  wealth.  It  will  be  agreed 
that  we  must  look  for  other  signs. 

Shall  we  fall  back,  then,  upon  success  in  war 
and  take  that  as  our  test  ?  But  this  again 
proves  nothing,  or  nothing  to  the  purpose. 
To  begin  with,  the  44  power  ”  to  which  conquest 
bears  witness  is  power  of  a  special  kind  which 
may  co-exist  with  marked  weakness  in  other 
directions,  and  is  hardly  what  we  have  in 

143 


144 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


mind  when  the  power  of  the  people  is  in  question. 
But  waiving  that,  success  in  war  does  not  prove 
that  even  the  special  kind  of  power  which  war 
requires  is  on  the  increase.  It  might  be  that 
this  power  was  declining  in  all  the  nations 
together,  but  declining  less  rapidly  in  the 
nation  which  conquers  than  in  the  others.  To 
beat  your  enemies  in  war  it  is  not  necessary 
that  you  should  increase  in  warlike  power  ;  it 
is  enough  if  you  decrease  less  rapidly  than  they. 

Let  us  try  for  another  test.  What  shall  we 
say  to  the  extension  of  the  franchise  ?  That 
people,  we  might  argue,  is  growing  in  power 
which  is  giving  to  its  members  a  larger  share 
in  the  business  of  government ;  the  greater  the 
number  of  persons  who  possess  a  vote  the 
greater  will  be  the  power  of  the  people.  This 
at  first  sight  looks  more  promising  ;  but,  un¬ 
fortunately,  the  promise  is  damped  by  further 
consideration.  What  looks  promising  is  that 
the  people,  all  of  whom  we  will  assume  now 
possess  the  vote,  have  the  power  to  get  what 
they  want.  What  damps  the  promise  is  that 
the  people  seldom  know  what  they  want. 
Shall  we  keep  Mesopotamia  1  or  shall  we  give 

1  Written  in  1917. 


THE  POWER  OF  THE  PEOPLE  145 


it  up  ?  Some  of  us  are  for  the  one,  some  for 
the  other.  Shall  we  establish  Home  Rule  or 
try  something  else  ?  Some  of  us  are  for  the 
one,  some  for  the  other.  Consequently  the 
people  break  into  parties  or  factions,  and  in¬ 
stead  of  concentrating  their  power  on  a  prompt 
settlement  of  Ireland  or  Mesopotamia,  waste  it 
in  a  war  of  minds  which  goes  on  for  a  half- 
century  and  generates  so  much  bad  temper 
that  the  questions  at  issue  become  almost 
insoluble.  Is  that  a  sign  of  power  ? 

But  we  are  not  yet  at  the  end  of  our  tether. 
Instead  of  thinking  of  the  questions  on  which 
the  people  seem  unable  to  make  up  their  minds, 
let  us  turn  to  those  which  by  one  means  or 
another  do  get  themselves  settled.  Let  us 
judge  by  accomplished  results,  by  the  legisla¬ 
tion  actually  turned  out,  by  the  elaboration 
and  the  efficiency  of  the  government  machinery, 
of  one  kind  or  another,  which  an  enfranchised 
people  sets  up  for  the  purpose  of  defending  its 
house  and  keeping  the  inmates  in  order. 

There  are  the  army  and  navy,  equipped  with 
all  that  science  and  skill  can  devise.  There  are 
the  Constitution,  the  laws,  the  rules  of  Parlia¬ 
mentary  Procedure,  the  Courts  of  Justice,  the 

10 


146 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


jails,  the  police.  Behold  this  vast  organisation, 
and  as  it  develops  and  extends  and  imposes  its 
rules  on  ever- widening  circles  of  the  normal  life, 
may  we  not  say  that  the  people,  whose  will  it 
represents,  is  growing  in  power  ? 

At  last,  then,  we  seem  to  have  discovered  a 
sound  test  by  applying  which  we  can  ascertain 
whether  the  power  of  the  people  is  increasing 
or  the  reverse.  The  test  is  organisation,  as 
revealed  by  the  laws  enacted  and  enforced. 

But  even  this  test  is  not  infallible.  Unless 
the  greatest  care  is  used  in  its  application  it 
may  lead  to  mischievous  conclusions,  and  has 
in  fact  done  so  already.  It  may  give  us  an 
inflated  notion  of  the  power  of  the  people, 
and  it  may  blind  us  to  their  weakness. 

We  must  ask  not  merely  how  much  organisa¬ 
tion  there  is,  but  what  is  its  purpose,  what  is  it 
for  ?  Suppose  that  the  greater  part  consists  of 
laws  and  rules  for  compelling  people  to  do  what 
they  ought  to  do  for  themselves  without  com¬ 
pulsion — for  example,  keeping  their  promises, 
or  providing  for  their  old  age,  or  educating  their 
children,  or  behaving  themselves  decently  in 
the  streets.  Should  we  not  now  begin  to  draw 
conclusions  contrary  to  those  to  which  our  first 


THE  POWER  OF  THE  PEOPLE  147 


impressions  led  us  ?  Should  we  not  say  that 
all  this  governmental  machinery  which  seems 
at  first  sight  to  speak  of  nothing  but  power 
is  rather  the  sign  of  weakness  further  back  ? 
Evidently,  we  should  argue,  these  people  are 
weak  in  the  principle  of  honour,  weak  in  the 
sense  of  parental  duty,  weak  in  self-respect  and 
intelligence,  or  they  would  not  require  so  many 
laws  and  so  many  policemen  to  compel  them 
to  keep  their  promises,  to  educate  their  children, 
to  provide  for  their  old  age,  and  to  behave 
decently  in  the  streets.  Suppose  some  genial 
philosopher  should  take  us  to  a  chemist’s  shop 
and  say,  44  Here  are  the  signs  of  the  health  of 
the  people.  See  how  powerfully  science  is 
grappling  with  the  ills  of  the  body.  An  appro¬ 
priate  remedy  for  every  disease  !  Not  one  of 
them  without  its  corresponding  bottle  of  physic  ! 
Lethal  weapons  for  the  microbe  !  Death  for 
colic,  gout,  measles  !  You  are  in  the  very 
temple  of  health.” 

What  should  we  answer  to  our  genial  philo¬ 
sopher  ?  “  Your  argument,”  we  should  say, 

“  is  a  bad  one.” 

Let  us  try  a  bolder  image  still.  Suppose  we 
could  be  introduced  in  turn  to  two  planets. 


148 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


The  first  we  will  imagine  to  be  roaring  with 
“  government  ”  of  the  type  or  types  that  now 
exist  on  this  earth  ;  parliaments  in  full  swing 
everywhere ;  laws  pouring  out  from  the  Senate- 
house  like  sausages  from  a  Chicago  pork- 
factory  ;  an  incorruptible  policeman  at  every 
street  corner  ;  and  a  good  substantial  jail  to 
reassure  the  nervous  traveller  at  the  entrance 
of  every  town.  Our  second  planet  shall  have 
none  of  these  things.  Its  inhabitants  shall 
manage  their  affairs  by  means  of  an  under¬ 
standing,  such  as  exists  in  every  well-regulated 
family,  that  they  are  to  trust  one  another  for 
decent  behaviour.  On  which  of  these  two 
planets  should  we  see  the  plainest  signs  of  the 
power  of  the  people  ? 

But  all  this,  it  may  be  said,  is  not  quite  fair. 
Granted  that  the  laws  and  the  courts  of  justice 
and  the  jails  and  the  policemen,  and  all  the 
other  means  the  people  take  to  keep  themselves 
in  order,  do  suggest  what  you  say — namely, 
that  the  principle  of  order  must  be  weak  to 
begin  with.  But  they  suggest  something  else 
as  well,  which  is,  that  the  people  know  their 
weakness  and  are  taking  the  appropriate  means 
to  make  themselves  strong.  It  is  because  they 


THE  POWER  OF  THE  PEOPLE  149 


recognise  the  importance  of  their  duties  and 
are  resolved  to  acquire  the  habit  of  doing  them, 
that  they  set  up  a  government  and  continually 
increase  its  scope.  The  government  is  a  sign 
of  power  after  all. 

Very  good.  But  now,  if  this  line  of  reasoning 
is  sound,  what  are  we  entitled  to  expect  ?  We 
are  entitled  to  expect  that  as  time  goes  on 
there  will  be  a  gradual  diminution  of  the 
function  of  government.  As  the  people  acquire 
the  habits  of  order  and  goodwill  which  the  laws 
and  the  police  are  intended  to  teach  them,  the 
output  of  law  and  the  number  of  policemen  will 
steadily  decrease.  But  they  don’t  decrease. 
They  increase  continually.  Day  by  day  there 
are  more  orders  to  obey  and  more  compulsion 
to  submit  to.  The  habit  of  spontaneous  good 
behaviour  is  not  being  acquired.  The  habit 
that  is  being  acquired  is  of  a  very  different  kind. 
It  is  the  habit  of  relying  upon  government  to 
effect  everything  which  we  might  effect  for 
ourselves.  The  growth  of  that  habit  measures 
the  growing  weakness  of  the  people. 

The  true  test  of  growth  in  the  power  of  the 
people  lies  not  in  the  amount  of  government 
it  creates,  but  in  the  amount  of  government 


150 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


it  can  dispense  with ;  not  in  the  number  of 
laws  it  enacts,  but  in  the  number  it  can  do 
without. 

The  cry  is  ever  for  more  government  and 
more  laws ;  and  when  one  pleads  for  less 
government  and  fewer  laws,  and  argues  that 
a  sovereign  people  should  show  its  sovereignty 
by  abstaining  from  the  misconduct  which 
renders  policemen  necessary,  there  is  an 
inevitable  shout  of  derision:  “What!  No 
courts  of  law  !  No  jails  !  No  lawyers  !  No 
elections  !  No  Secretaries  of  State  !  ”  Thus 
the  Spectator  not  long  ago,  in  criticising  certain 
pacifist  proposals  of  a  rather  foolish  nature,  had 
this  sentence :  “  There  would  certainly  be 

greater  waste  of  money  and  greater  human 
suffering  if  we  disbanded  our  police  force,  pulled 
down  our  jails,  and  placed  no  check  on  private 
greed  and  private  passion.”  Quite  true.  But 
the  point  is  that  whatever  sign  of  a  people’s 
power  may  be  read  in  the  jails  and  policemen 
appointed  to  check  its  evil  passions,  there  is  a 
sign  of  greater  weakness  in  the  evil  passions  that 
need  to  be  so  checked. 

There  is  a  much  shorter  cut  to  the  same  end 
than  that  provided  by  the  jails  and  policemen, 


THE  POWER  OF  THE  PEOPLE  151 


which  is,  of  course,  to  get  rid  of  the  evil  passions 
in  the  first  instance ;  and  that  is  what  we 
should  expect  a  really  powerful  people  to 
do.  I  suppose  most  persons  would  grant  so 
obvious  a  commonplace.  Why,  then,  has  no 
sovereign  people  so  far  taken  this  obvious 
shorter  cut  ?  Because  we  have  a  wrong  notion 
of  sovereignty ;  because  we  consistently  look 
to  our  masters  to  do  for  us  what  we  could  do 
much  better  for  ourselves  ;  because  we  have 
fallen  so  deeply  into  the  habit  of  trusting  to 
jails  and  policemen  to  do  the  business,  that  we 
have  forgotten  how  easily  the  whole  business 
might  be  done  by  the  exercise  of  qualities  which 
anybody  can  acquire. 

Nothing  is  more  curious  in  the  political 
thought  of  our  day  than  the  dominance  in  it 
of  the  idea  of  the  policeman.  It  would  scarcely 
be  an  exaggeration  to  say  that  our  ultimate  cate¬ 
gory  of  political  thought  is  the  police.  And 
not  of  our  political  thought  alone,  for  the  God 
whom  many  of  us  worship.  .  .  .  But  let  us 
keep  to  politics.  The  very  44  pacifists  ”  whom 
the  Spectator  trounces  for  wanting  to  get  rid  of 
the  police  have  oddly  enough  a  scheme  of  their 
own  on  hand  for  setting  up  an  international 


152 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


police  as  a  means  of  preventing  war.  There 
seems  no  getting  rid  of  the  police  obsession — 
no  persuading  people,  not  even  pacifists,  to 
take  the  pacific  way  of  common  sense  instead 
of  the  provocative  way  of  police  supervision. 


ON  TRUSTING  GREAT  MEN 


It  is  much  easier  to  say  what  a  great  man  is 
not,  than  to  say  what  he  is.  All  that  need  be 
said  on  the  positive  side  has  been  said  by 
Carlyle,  and  I  must  refer  the  reader  to  his 
incomparable  pages  for  further  information. 

A  great  man  is  not  the  common  measure  of 
lesser  men.  He  is  not  the  soul  of  a  committee, 
nor  of  a  people.  You  don’t  get  his  portrait 
by  making  a  composite  photograph  of  his 
inferiors ;  nor  the  value  of  his  qualities  by 
summarising  theirs.  All  which  is  a  roundabout 
way  of  saying  that  the  great  man  represents 
nobody.  This  can  be  proved  quite  simply. 
For  if  a  great  man  represents  a  multitude, 
then,  reciprocally,  the  multitude  ought  to  be 
able  to  represent  him ;  and  that  everybody 
knows  to  be  absurd. 

One  of  the  hollowest  of  the  fictions  that  have 
arisen  from  our  dabblings  in  psychology  is  the 

153 


154 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


notion  that  one  man  can  “  represent  ”  another 
man,  which  of  course  is  precisely  what  no 
human  individual  could  ever  do  for  another 
since  the  world  began,  each  individual  being 
unique.  This  fundamental  truth,  which  is  apt 
to  be  obscured  when  “  average  ”  men  are  in 
question,  stands  out  quite  clearly  when  the 
great  man,  who  is  obviously  unique,  steps  upon 
the  scene.  How  can  a  great  mind  represent  a 
lot  of  lesser  minds  than  itself  ?  The  thing  is 
transparently  nonsensical.  As  well  talk  of  an 
Egyptian  pyramid  representing  a  suburb  of 
jerry-built  houses,  or  a  rose  representing  a  field 
of  turnips.  If  the  great  man  may  be  said  to 
represent  anything  at  all,  he  represents  not 
what  his  inferiors  are  but  precisely  what  they 
are  not.  He  stands  in  his  own  rights. 

Whence  it  follows  that  when  a  multitude  of 
lesser  men  elect  one  greater  than  themselves 
to  do  their  business,  what  they  ought  to 
expect  is  not  that  he  will  act  as  they  would  act, 
but  that  he  will  act  differently,  i.e.  more  wisely. 
If  what  they  want  is  a  man  who  would  act 
precisely  as  they  would  act  in  the  given 
circumstances,  then  they  should  be  especially 
careful  not  to  elect  a  greater  man  than  them- 


ON  TRUSTING  GREAT  MEN 


155 


selves.  They  should  choose  one  of  their 
own  number.  But  let  us  suppose  that  in  the 
day  of  crisis  a  wise  democracy,  knowing  its 
own  limitations  (the  chief  part  of  wisdom), 
knowing  that  great  emergencies  do  not  wait 
the  pleasure  of  warring  factions,  chooses  its 
pilot  and  gives  him  charge  to  weather  the 
storm. 

How  will  they  treat  him  ?  The  answer  is 
given  in  four  words.  They  will  trust  him .  And 
by  trusting  him,  and  causing  him  to  feel  that 
he  is  trusted,  they  will  strengthen  his  hands. 
Herein  they  will  show  that  they  are  loyal  to 
the  democratic  principle  in  its  purest  form. 
No  man  among  them  shall  say,  44  Yon  pilot  is 
a  menace  to  our  liberty.”  They  will  say  rather, 
44  He  is  the  guardian  of  our  liberty,  and  as  such 
we,  who  have  freely  chosen  him  to  carry  our 
burden,  will  trust  him,  honour  him,  uphold 
him.” 

Thus  it  will  be  seen  that  the  treatment  of 
great  men  is  largely  a  question  of  good 
manners.  When,  some  time  ago,  a  certain 
writer  expatiated  on  the  importance  of  good 
manners  to  the  stability  of  a  great  nation, 
some  persons  supposed  that  he  meant  such 


156 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


things  as  lifting  your  hat  when  you  say 
good-bye  to  your  sister,  or  not  making  a 
gobbling  noise  when  you  take  soup.  He  had 
to  explain  that  he  was  thinking  of  the  “  charity 
that  never  faileth,”  and  with  particular 
reference  to  current  methods  of  treating  great 
men.  In  these  there  is  very  little  of  the 
charity  that  never  faileth.  And  a  consideration 
of  the  deplorable  effects  which  follow  from  this 
ought  to  convince  the  most  austere  that  there 
are  some  situations  where  good  manners  are 
indispensable  to  morality. 

For  example,  many  of  us  have  an  abominable 
habit  of  suspecting  that  every  great  man  wants 
to  become  a  dictator — one  of  the  meanest 
motives  you  could  attribute  to  any  man,  and 
a  foul  insult  when  attributed  to  a  great  one. 
It  is  an  asinine  and  scoundrelly  thing  to  harbour 
such  a  suspicion.  Who  but  an  ass  would  appoint 
a  man  to  perform  a  task  which  only  an  inde¬ 
pendent  spirit  could  tackle,  and  then  suspect 
him  of  wanting  to  be  a  dictator  because  forsooth 
he  shows  independence  ?  And  who  but  a 
scoundrel  would  say  to  a  man,  “  I  will  trust  you 
to  see  this  thing  through,”  and  then  charge 
him  with  personal  ambition,  and  tell  other  mean 


ON  TRUSTING  GREAT  MEN 


157 


stories  to  his  discredit  the  moment  he  sets  his 
hand  to  the  plough  ?  And  yet  that  is  the  way 
in  which  many  of  us  are  accustomed  to  treat 
our  great  men.  It  is  a  demoralising  business 
for  all  concerned  :  demoralising  for  the  great 
men,  who  are  sometimes  driven  by  despair  to 
play  down  to  their  detractors,  and  so  become 
what  they  are  suspected  of  being  ;  demoralising 
for  the  detractors,  whose  vanity  it  feeds  and 
whose  pettiness  it  accentuates. 

The  desire  to  become  a  dictator  is  the 
characteristic  vice  of  a  little  man,  and  we  may 
take  it  as  demonstrably  certain  that  no  man 
who  is  truly  great  is  capable  of  harbouring  any 
such  desire.  Yet  the  position  is  somewhat 
paradoxical.  For  while  it  is  true  on  the  one 
hand  that  no  great  man  ever  wants  to  be  a 
dictator,  it  is  equally  true  on  the  other  that  he 
cannot  help  dictating.  That,  in  fact,  is  what  he 
is  for,  what  he  has  been  appointed  to  do.  If 
all  we  require  at  the  head  of  affairs  is  a  person 
who  will  do  what  he  is  told  to  do  by  the  public, 
or  by  the  Press,  or  by  the  leading  ladies  of 
London  Society,  any  diligent  fool,  any  well- 
groomed  nonentity,  will  serve  our  purpose. 
In  fact  the  hero’s  valet  will  do  the  business 


158 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


better  than  the  hero  himself.  Is  it  not  a  folly, 
nay  a  crime,  to  waste  a  hero  by  giving  him 
such  a  commission  ?  Was  there  ever  per¬ 
versity  like  this  ?  Was  there  ever  an  exhibition 
of  worse  manners  ?  It  is  vulgarity  gone  mad. 

Now  there  are  two  tests  of  the  greatness  of  a 
people.  One  is  its  capacity  for  producing  great 
men,  so  as  to  have  them  ready  when  a 
crisis  or  emergency  has  to  be  met.  The  other 
is  right  treatment  of  the  great  men  when  they 
are  produced.  The  two  tests  are  virtually  one. 
Great  men  will  not  be  produced,  or  at  least  they 
will  not  come  forward  unless  there  is  a  fair 
chance  that  the  public  will  treat  them  like 
gentlemen.  On  the  other  hand,  if  the  public 
treats  them  meanly  they  will  be  spoilt,  and 
instead  of  having  great  men  for  our  leaders 
we  shall  have  only  spoiled  great  men — that  is, 
the  worst  kind  of  leader  conceivable.  Put 
it  either  way  and  the  result  is  the  same.  The 
public  will  get  for  its  leaders  none  but  the 
second-rate  men  who,  just  because  they  are 
second-rate,  do  not  wince  when  they  hear 
themselves  suspected  of  wanting  to  be  dic¬ 
tators,  which  in  their  case  is  conceivably  true. 

As  to  the  production  of  great  men — the  actual 


ON  TRUSTING  GREAT  MEN 


159 


breeding  of  them — I  am  not  competent  to 
offer  any  suggestions,  and  must  leave  the  whole 
question  to  the  eugenists  or  other  experts. 
On  the  whole,  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  the 
breeding  of  this  particular  class  of  men  is  beyond 
the  resources  of  positive  science. 

To  say  of  any  man  that  he  is  great  is  only 
another  way  of  saying  he  can  be  trusted. 
Unless  we  trust  him  he  is  of  very  little  use  to 
us.  His  greatness,  so  to  speak,  is  thrown  away. 
To  mistrust  him,  or  simply  not  to  trust  him, 
is  bad  both  for  us  and  for  him  :  bad  for  us, 
because  it  leads  us  to  cultivate  the  habit  of 
disloyalty  ;  bad  for  him,  because  it  compels 
him  to  fritter  away  the  time  and  energy 
needed  for  doing  our  business,  in  defending 
himself  against  our  mistrust  or  our  criticisms. 
How  much  of  the  precious  time  and  strength 
of  such  men  has  to  be  spent  in  beating  off  the 
birds  of  prey  whose  occupation  it  is  to  peck  and 
hawk  at  the  work  of  the  great !  One  can  hardly 
think  of  it  without  weeping.  If  only  we  could 
have  trusted  these  men  a  little  more  they  would 
have  yet  been  greater  men  ;  and  they  would 
have  done  our  business  better. 

The  difficulty  of  learning  to  trust  our  great 


160 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


men  arises,  in  chief,  from  the  circumstance  that 
opinion  is  always  sharply  divided  on  the  claim 
to  greatness.  I  may  think,  for  example,  that 

Mr - is  a  great  man  ;  but  others  think  the 

contrary,  make  him  their  target  and  shoot  him 
down.  The  truth  is,  that  our  instinct  for 
the  detection  of  great  men  is  deplorably 
undeveloped. 

How  to  improve  it  is  a  large  question,  con¬ 
nected  with  our  whole  manner  of  life  and 
thought.  It  is  much  easier  to  say  how  the 
needed  improvement  is  prevented.  It  is  pre¬ 
vented  by  the  atmosphere,  manners,  method, 
spirit  and  aims  of  party  government.  In  party 
government  the  prime  object  is  not  to  get  the 
business  done  in  the  best  manner  and  the 
shortest  time,  but  to  dish  your  opponents  ;  and 
if  that  is  accomplished,  few  persons  care  much 
about  the  great  men  who  are  sacrificed  in  the 
process.  Every  sharp  debater  who  can  shoot 
a  great  man  down  thinks  himself  to  be 
doing  God  service  and  is  applauded  for  his 
performance.  In  such  an  atmosphere  the 
habit  of  mind  which  thinks  about  great  men, 
meditates  on  their  value  and  learns  to  trust 
them,  has  no  chance  of  forming  itself ;  and  the 


ON  TRUSTING  GREAT  MEN 


161 


instinct  for  detecting  great  men  becomes  atro¬ 
phied.  Of  course  the  shooting-down  tactics  of 
the  one  party  may  have  the  effect,  incidentally, 
of  increasing  the  devotion  of  the  other 
party  to  their  chief.  But  this  effect  is  not 
altogether  good,  for  it  leads  the  party  attacked 
to  make  their  great  man  into  an  idol,  which 
is  the  next  worse  thing  to  using  him  as 
a  target.  Wrong  treatment  of  the  great  man 
is  thus  promoted  from  both  sides.  If  we 
could  get  out  of  this  atmosphere  altogether 
our  instinct  for  detecting  great  men,  which 
is  after  all  a  natural  gift,  would  begin  to 
assert  itself,  with  results  most  beneficial  to  our 
public  life. 


11 


LEADERSHIP 

The  power  to  dismiss  its  leaders  at  a  moment’s 
notice  and  replace  them  with  new  ones  has 
been  celebrated  as  a  notable  privilege  of 
democracy.  I  have  heard  it  said  that  this 
power  is  one  of  the  safeguards  of  liberty.  And 
so  perhaps  it  is.  But  what  kind  of  liberty  is 
that  which  requires  safeguarding  by  an  arrange¬ 
ment  so  drastic  ?  And  what  kind  of  men  are 
they  who  will  accept  the  position  of  leaders  on 
the  understanding  that  they  are  subject  to 
instant  dismissal  ?  And  what  is  the  point  in 
choosing  a  leader  whose  retention  of  office  is 
contingent  on  his  pleasing  you  ?  There  was 
once  a  great  leader  who  said  to  his  followers, 
“You  have  not  chosen  me  ;  I  have  chosen  you.” 
That  strikes  the  true  note  of  leadership,  but 
what  can  democracy  make  of  it  ? 

These  questions,  which,  of  course,  are  very 

old  ones,  were  brought  back  to  my  mind  with 

162 


LEADERSHIP 


103 


fresh  force  by  a  perusal  of  Lord  Morley’s 
Recollections — and  especially  by  the  chapter 
which  deals  with  the  Irish  troubles  of  the 
early  ’nineties.  Lord  Morley  heads  his  chapter 
44  The  Tornado,”  though  it  seems  a  tornado  in 
a  teacup  when  compared  with  the  recent  storms, 
which  the  powers  of  darkness  had  even  then 
begun  to  brew.  The  principal  justification  for 
calling  it  a  tornado  is  that  it  lifted  the  roof  off 
the  house  where  the  political  leaders  of  that 
time  had  established  their  dwelling,  and  dis¬ 
persed  the  inmates  into  various  exiles. 

As  we  read  Lord  Morley’s  narrative  we  see 
how  these  poor  men  lived  in  the  apprehension 
of  instant  dismissal ;  how  thin  and  rotten  was 
much  of  the  ice  they  skated  on ;  how  con¬ 
stantly  they  were  engaged  in  warning  one 
another  of  the  rotten  places  and  seeking  to 
avoid  them  ;  how  slippery  and  steep  were  the 
precipices  they  had  to  climb,  and  how  again 
and  again  they  hung  on  by  their  teeth,  expect¬ 
ing  every  moment  to  be  plunged  into  the  abyss 
— as  indeed  they  ultimately  were,  on  a  slight 
impulse  administered  by  the  Irish  leader  of 
those  days.  Much  of  their  time  was  spent  in 
manoeuvring  to  save  themselves  from  being 


164 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


overthrown  by  their  own  followers,  and  a  most 
exciting  business  it  evidently  was.  They  piped, 
but  neither  Parliament  nor  the  public  would 
dance.  They  were  certainly  under  no  illusion 
as  to  the  security  of  their  tenure.  They  knew 
they  were  destined  to  a  brief  career,  and  when 
the  moment  of  dismissal  arrived,  they  accepted 
it  without  complaint,  as  sportsmen  should. 
Yet  these  men,  who  never  knew  whether  the 
morrow  would  see  them  politically  alive,  were 
the  very  men  whom  the  British  electors  had 
chosen  to  lead  in  dealing  with  the  most  per¬ 
plexing  problem  of  our  political  history  —  a 
problem  requiring  length  of  time,  far-reaching 
plans,  and  tenacity  of  purpose  maintained 
through  many  years.  With  a  courage  that 
cannot  be  too  much  admired  they  undertook 
their  leadership,  clearly  understanding  that 
whatever  plans  they  had  formed,  whatever 
policy  they  had  begun,  might  be  abruptly 
broken  off  at  any  moment.  And  in  all  this 
their  position  was  not  exceptional.  It  was  the 
position  occupied  by  all  leaders  in  a  democracy 
whose  liberty  is  guarded  by  powers  of  immediate 
dismissal. 

Although  this  state  of  things  is  all  fair, 


LEADERSHIP 


165 


open  and  avowed,  it  has  some  disadvantages. 
“Minister,”  of  course,  means  “servant.”  But 
so  far  as  I  know,  Ministers  of  State  are  the  only 
class  of  servants  who  can  be  dismissed  without 
notice.  We  could  hardly  expect  to  secure  an 
efficient  gardener  or  an  efficient  butler  on  those 
terms.  No  doubt  if  we  paid  our  gardeners  and 
butlers  at  the  rate  of  £5000  a  year  the  positions 
would  be  attractive  to  a  certain  order  of 
adventurous  spirits,  and  we  should  have  many 
applicants.  But  even  so  things  would  not 
prosper  either  in  the  greenhouse  or  the  wine- 
cellar.  We  should  be  exposed  to  annoy¬ 
ing  intrigues  in  the  servants’  hall,  with  what 
result  to  our  peaches  and  old  wine  may  be 
easily  imagined — just  as  the  public  is  exposed 
to  annoying  intrigues  in  Parliament,  with  what 
result  to  the  public  interest  is  well  known. 

In  war  the  military  oath  pledges  us  to  follow 
our  leaders  and  obey  their  orders  for  a  definite 
period — to  the  end  of  the  campaign,  or  for  a 
stated  term  of  years  ;  in  politics  we  reserve  the 
right  to  desert  our  leaders  whenever  we  choose, 
or — which  comes  to  the  same  thing — to  turn 
them  out  at  any  time  by  the  same  methods 
which  put  them  in. 


166 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


Now  this  is  a  pretty  arrangement  when 
looked  at  from  the  point  of  view  of  those  whose 
business  in  politics  is  to  follow — the  mass  of 
the  citizens.  It  is  pleasant  to  feel  that  you 
are  under  no  obligation  to  obey  orders  a 
moment  longer  than  you  are  disposed.  But 
the  leaders,  surely,  must  view  it  in  a  different 
light,  and  the  standing  wonder  is  that  any  man 
of  first-rate  intelligence  should  be  willing  to 
engage  himself  to  the  public  on  those  con¬ 
ditions.  For  who  knows  better  than  he  that  in 
great  affairs  nothing  can  be  done  in  a  hurry  ; 
that  the  objects  best  worth  striving  for  are 
distant,  and  that  he  can  accomplish  little  unless 
he  is  sure  of  long-dated  loyalty  in  his  followers 
to  match  the  length  of  the  journey  that  lies 
before  him. 

Truly  it  must  be  a  heart-breaking  business, 
and  £5000  a  year  seems  a  small  solatium  to 
offer  any  man  for  enduring  it.  To  make  far- 
reaching  plans  for  the  public  good,  and  then 
find  them  suddenly  upset  or  endlessly  deferred 
because  a  section  of  your  followers  has  exer¬ 
cised  the  sacred  right  to  desert  you  when  they 
will — this  makes  one  ask  what  stuff  the  men 
are  made  of  who  consent  to  take  office  on  these 


LEADERSHIP 


167 


terms.  No  doubt  they  have  their  consolations, 
and  even  enjoy  the  wild  adventure  while  it  lasts  ; 
but  that  only  serves  to  divert  one’s  sympathy 
from  them  to  the  public.  For  it  is  the  public 
which  pays  for  this,  as  for  everything  else. 

An  American  writer,  Dr  Cram,  has  published 
a  book  called  The  Nemesis  of  Mediocrity ,  in 
which  he  discusses  this  question  of  leadership. 
He  makes  a  canvass  of  the  various  men  who 
have  lately  come  to  the  front,  especially  in 
politics,  and  dismisses  them,  one  after  another, 
as  mediocre,  with  President  Wilson  as  a  possible 
exception.  The  mediocrity  of  our  leaders  re¬ 
flects,  he  thinks,  the  general  mediocrity  of  our 
own  lives,  so  that  in  a  sense  it  is  ourselves  who 
are  to  blame.  The  moral  is  that  we  must  get 
rid  of  our  own  mediocrity  before  we  can  expect 
anything  else  in  our  leaders. 

Now  there  are  two  ways  in  which  we  may 
get  rid  of  our  mediocrity,  one  pointing  down¬ 
wards,  the  other  pointing  upwards.  It  is  clearly 
the  latter  that  Dr  Cram  recommends.  But 
would  it  have  the  effect  he  anticipates  ?  Would 
the  efficiency  of  our  leaders  rise  automatically 
with  the  parallel  rise  in  the  qualities  of  the 
public  ?  Well,  it  depends  on  the  qualities.  A 


168 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


following  composed  of  superior  persons  would 
be  a  very  difficult  lot  for  any  leader  to  handle. 
Suppose,  for  example,  that  the  average  citizen 
were  to  acquire  the  political  intelligence  and 
the  high  moral  standards  of  Dr  Cram  himself, 
and  were  to  apply  this  intelligence  and  these 
high  standards  in  criticising  his  chief.  Is  it 
not  obvious  that  under  these  circumstances 
the  position  of  the  leader  would  become  in¬ 
tolerable  ? 

Little  to  be  envied  is  the  great  man  entrusted 
with  the  task  of  leading  a  public  in  which  there 
are  thousands  of  connoisseurs  in  leadership 
prowling  about  and  seeking  whom  they  may 
devour.  He  would  soon  come  to  grief.  The 
sharpness  of  their  criticism  would  undo  him; 
he  would  be  torn  to  pieces.  We  may  com¬ 
pare  the  situation  with  the  report  of  a  gentle¬ 
man  recently  returned  from  Russia.  He  said 
that  when  the  revolution  took  place  all  the 
privates  in  the  Russian  army  suddenly  became 
generals.  After  a  little  experience  it  occurred 
to  this  army  of  generals  that  it  would  be  wise 
to  appoint  a  generalissimo,  and  a  deputation 
was  sent  to  a  promising  strategist  to  offer  him 
the  post.  For  answer  the  promising  strategist 


LEADERSHIP 


169 


drew  his  hand  across  his  throat  and  shook  his 
head  ;  which  gestures  the  deputation  rightly 
understood  as  meaning  that  the  post  was 
declined.  This  incident  seems  a  fair  illus¬ 
tration  of  what  is  likely  to  happen  when  a 
public  which  has  got  rid  of  its  mediocrity,  as 
the  Russian  privates  had  done,  sets  about  the 
task  of  finding  a  leader.  The  matter  is  deeply 
paradoxical.  Is  it  not  because  of  our  medioc¬ 
rity  that  we  need  somebody  who  is  not  mediocre 
to  lead  us  ?  What  then  will  happen  when  we 
have  all  ceased  to  be  mediocre  ? 

The  truth  is,  that  the  game  of  leadership 
requires  two  to  play  it :  a  leader  to  give  orders 
and  a  public  to  obey  them.  The  problem  is 
not  merely  that  of  finding  a  man  who  is  able 
to  lead  ;  it  is  equally  that  of  finding  a  public 
which  is  willing  to  follow.  People  who  deplore 
the  lack  of  great  leadership  in  modern  times 
usually  fix  their  attention  on  the  first  half  of 
the  problem  and  ignore  the  second  altogether. 
We  clamour  for  leaders,  and  grow  less  and  less 
willing  to  follow  anybody.  Perhaps  we  are 
under  some  illusion.  Most  of  us  feel  that  if 
only  we  could  find  a  leader  after  our  own  heart 
we  would  gladly  follow  him.  After  our  own 


170 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


heart  !  Precisely ;  but  may  it  not  be  that  what 
we  all  need — as  distinct  from  what  we  want — 
is  a  leader  not  after  our  own  heart  ?  Should 
we  follow  him  ? 

The  difficulty  of  finding  leaders  is  therefore 
far  greater  than  the  mere  form  of  words  sug¬ 
gests,  for  it  includes  the  difficulty  of  finding 
followers  —  the  major  part  of  the  problem. 
What  is  to  be  done  ?  Various  alternatives 
present  themselves,  of  which  the  following  are 
perhaps  the  chief : 

1.  Would  not  the  public  be  well  advised  to 
make  up  its  mind  to  do  without  leaders  alto¬ 
gether,  contenting  itself  with  servants  only, 
and  giving  all  Ministers  of  State  to  understand 
clearly  that  that  is  what  they  are  and  that 
nothing  else  is  expected  of  them  ?  Is  not  the 
public  playing  fast  and  loose  with  a  vital 
problem  when  in  one  and  the  same  breath  it 
declares  itself  master  and  bemoans  its  lack  of 
leaders  ?  Is  not  this  double-minded  ? 

2.  May  we  not  have  a  kind  of  secret  leader¬ 
ship  exercised  by  powerful  personalities,  whose 
identity  is  unknown  to  the  public,  but  who, 
by  indirection  and  various  byways,  manage  to 
make  their  ideas  effective  and  so  lead  the  people 


LEADERSHIP 


171 


without  letting  them  know  who  is  leading  them 
or  even  that  they  are  being  led  at  all  ?  These 
men  by  playing  their  part  judiciously  might 
wield  enormous  influence,  though,  of  course, 
they  would  receive  no  salaries,  and  enjoy  no 
fame  until  they  were  dead.  Much  influence  of 
this  kind  is  being  actually  exercised  at  the 
present  moment,  though  perhaps  it  is  a  little 
indiscreet  to  say  so.  We  make  a  mistake  in 
thinking  only  of  the  great  men  who  are  in 
evidence.  We  should  think  also  of  those  who 
are  in  hiding.  There  are  many  of  them.  Some 
are  in  hiding  for  reasons  suggested  by  the  in¬ 
cident  of  the  Russian  generalissimo.  Should 
not  these  men  be  encouraged  ?  And  would  not 
a  wise  public  abstain  from  all  efforts  to  lift  the 
veil  of  anonymity  which  now  protects  their 
leadership  from  destruction  ? 

3.  The  last  alternative  is  suggested  by  the 
position  of  the  President  of  the  United  States. 
He  is  appointed  leader  for  four  years  with 
the  possibility  of  renewing  the  term.  It  is  an 
admirable  arrangement,  for  it  gives  the  Presi¬ 
dent  an  incentive  which  Ministers  of  State  who 
are  subject  to  dismissal  without  notice  do  not 
possess.  The  men  who  framed  the  American 


172 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


Constitution  had  a  profound  political  insight. 
They  understood  that  leadership  is  a  game 
which  two  must  play  if  it  is  to  be  played  at  all ; 
and  accordingly  they  made  arrangements  to 
follow  their  leader  for  four  years . 


SECRET  DIPLOMACY 


Of  all  the  words  in  current  use  there  are  none 
which  stand  in  greater  need  of  definition  than 
the  two  words  44  policy  ”  and  44  diplomacy.” 
To  ascertain  what  he  means  by  these  words, 
which  he  has  constantly  on  his  lips,  may  be 
commended  as  a  useful  exercise  to  anyone 
who  takes  an  interest  in  public  affairs.  He 
will  find  himself  in  deep  waters  before  he  has 
gone  very  far,  and  that  is  precisely  what  will 
do  him  good. 

If  we  open  any  newspaper,  whether  con¬ 
servative  or  revolutionary,  we  shall  find  the 
word  44  policy  ”  dotted  all  over  the  page,  like 
church  steeples  in  a  bird’s-eye  view  of  London ; 
while  here  and  there  the  word  44  diplomacy  ”  will 
stand  out  like  the  spire  or  dome  of  a  cathedral. 
The  two  words  are  obviously  related.  What¬ 
ever  44  policy  ”  may  be,  44  diplomacy  ”  is  a  more 
concentrated,  highly  finished,  and  august  form 

173 


174 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


of  the  same  thing.  The  crux  of  the  matter  is 
obviously  to  find  out  the  meaning  of  4 4  policy.” 

For  this  purpose  we  may  turn  either  to  the 
cynics  or  to  the  dictionaries.  The  cynics, 
like  the  dictionaries,  differ  considerably 
among  themselves,  but  they  all  agree  in  de¬ 
fining  policy  as  some  kind  of  art.  44  The  art 
of  deluding  the  public,”  44  the  art  of  dishing 
your  adversaries,”  44  the  art  of  dishonouring 
your  promises  while  appearing  to  keep  them,” 
44  the  art  of  shearing  the  innocent  sheep  nearer 
and  nearer  to  the  skin,”  44  the  art  of  turning 
the  stupidity  of  mankind  to  your  own  advan¬ 
tage,”  and  so  on — abominable  definitions  all  of 
them,  and  yet  none  without  a  grain  of  truth. 

^Turning  now  to  the  dictionaries,  it  is  obvious 
that  their  makers  find  “  policy  ”  an  exception¬ 
ally  hard  nut  to  crack.  My  own  dictionary, 
after  travailing  through  four  elaborate  but 
inconsistent  definitions,  finally  capitulates  to 
the  cynics  in  the  fifth,  which  is  44  dexterity  of 
management.”  Then,  as  though  exhausted  by 
its  efforts,  or  perhaps  as  giving  it  up  altogether, 
or  ashamed  of  its  capitulation  to  the  cynics,  it 
adds  the  significant  note,  44  see  Police  ” — the 
usual  device  of  an  Englishman  at  the  end  of  his 


SECRET  DIPLOMACY 


175 


wits.  After  which  it  is  a  great  relief  to  find 
that  in  Scotland  the  word  means  “the  pleasure 
grounds  around  a  nobleman’s  or  gentleman’s 
country  residence” — which  makes  one  wish 
that  the  Scottish  usage  were  universal. 

Baffled  in  our  attempts  to  comprehend  the 
idee-mere,  let  us  turn  to  its  more  highly  de¬ 
veloped  offspring — “  diplomacy.”  Here,  from 
the  outset,  we  find  ourselves  in  the  world  of  the 
esoteric,  the  private,  the  secret,  and  the  indi¬ 
cations,  it  must  be  confessed,  are  distinctly 
sinister.  We  are  informed  by  our  authority 
that  diplomacy  is  derived  from  a  Greek  word 
meaning  “to  double,”  and  that  in  the  form  of 
“  diploma  ”  it  refers  to  the  doubled  or  sealed 
piece  of  parchment  on  which  a  secret  authority 
to  practise  was  given  to  an  agent.  That  looks 
innocent  enough.  But  the  sinister  fact  is  that 
this  sense  of  something  sealed  or  doubled  pursues 
the  word  through  all  its  subsequent  mean¬ 
ings  until  finally  it  comes  to  indicate  a  sealed 
or  doubled  human  mind.  “  The  tactics  em¬ 
ployed  in  the  art  of  conducting  negotiations  ” 
— so  runs  the  penultimate  definition.  In  the 
next  paragraph  the  dictionary  comes  to  the 
point  and  makes  a  clean  breast  of  it — “  artful 


176 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


management  with  a  view  to  securing  advan¬ 
tages.”  Such  is  the  sense  given  by  an  advanced 
civilisation  to  a  word  which  began  its  history  in 
the  ages  of  the  world’s  innocence  by  meaning  a 
doubled  piece  of  paper. 

And  again  I  receive  the  impression  that  my 
dictionary  is  ashamed  of  its  own  performance 
and  tired  of  the  whole  nasty  business.  For,  on 
turning  up  the  word  44  diplomat,”  in  the  hope 
that  light  would  come  from  the  more  concrete 
term,  I  am  met  by  the  curt  announcement, 
64  see  Diplomatist.”  I  44  see  diplomatist  ”  ac¬ 
cordingly,  but,  alas !  the  only  definition  offered 
me  is  44  a  diplomat.”  44  Is  my  dictionary 
joking  ?  ”  I  ask  myself.  No,  it  is  acting 
diplomatically,  or,  which  perhaps  comes  to  the 
same  thing,  making  a  fool  of  me.  It  is  answer¬ 
ing  my  question  on  the  precise  principle  which 
governs  the  answers  to  half  the  questions  that 
are  asked  in  the  House  of  Commons. 

These  etymological  studies  may  be  com¬ 
mended  to  all  those  who  are  engaged  in  a 
crusade  for  44  open  diplomacy  ”  ;  in  other  words, 
for  the  making  single  of  that  whose  nature  is  to 
be  double.  Even  etymology  should  warn  them 
that  they  have  their  work  cut  out.  But  the 


SECRET  DIPLOMACY 


177 


difficulties  of  the  problem  are  by  no  means 
confined  to  etymology,  as  I  will  now  endeavour 
to  show. 

The  standing  difficulty  about  abolishing  any¬ 
thing  that  is  thoroughly  secret  is  that  you  never 
know  when  it  is  going  on.  If  you  know  that  it 
is  going  on,  it  is  no  secret ;  if  it  is  a  secret,  you 
neither  know  what  is  going  on,  where  it  is  going 
on,  when  it  is  going  on,  who  is  making  it  go  on, 
nor  even  that  it  is  going  on  at  all.  How,  then, 
can  you  abolish  it  ? 

Clearly  the  situation  is  one  in  which  we  are 
able  to  deal  with  the  mischief  only  after  it  has 
taken  place.  We  cannot  arrest  it  in  process, 
because  we  are  unaware  of  its  proceedings.  The 
best  we  can  do  is  to  wait  till  it  happens  and 
then  take  measures  to  prevent  it  happening 
again.  This  means  that  when  the  secret  oper¬ 
ator  has  been  found  out  we  can  punish  him  for 
his  secrecy,  as  a  warning  to  him  and  to  others 
not  to  repeat  the  offence. 

But  this,  after  all,  is  not  a  very  brilliant  way 
out  of  our  difficulty.  For  a  secret  which  is 
found  out  is  not,  strictly  speaking,  a  secret 
at  all.  We  may  define  it  as  something  which 

began  by  being  a  secret  but  couldn’t  keep  it 

12 


178 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


up.  Or,  to  use  more  concrete  terms,  we  may 
say  that  an  operator  who  lets  himself  be  found 
out  is  not  an  adept  in  secrecy.  Hence  the 
punishment  we  inflict  when  we  find  him  out 
will  have  a  different  effect  upon  him  from  that 
we  desire.  It  will  warn  him  to  be  more  secret 
next  time.  He  will  be  careful  not  to  repeat 
the  imperfect  secrecy  which  led  to  his  being 
found  out  and  got  him  into  trouble.  44  I  have 
got  into  this  trouble,”  he  will  say,  44  not  be¬ 
cause  I  was  secret,  but  because  I  wasn’t  secret 
enough.  I  will  do  better  next  time.”  This  is 
the  inevitable  consequence  of  all  anathemas  or 
punishments  directed  against  secrecy  as  such. 
We  think  we  are  imposing  deterrents.  What 
we  are  really  doing  is  to  offer  the  bungler  in 
secrecy  a  powerful  incentive  to  make  himself  a 
finished  artist. 

A  cynic  has  remarked  that  the  British  public 
traces  its  descent  on  the  political  side  from  the 
Wise  Men  of  Gotham.  In  support  of  this  a 
story  is  told  that  once  upon  a  time  the 
Gothamites  determined  to  repress  by  law  all 
malpractices  committed  after  dark.  These  ex¬ 
cellent  people  had  noted  the  connection  between 
darkness  and  wrong-doing,  and  hoped,  like  their 


SECRET  DIPLOMACY 


179 


modem  descendants,  that  by  striking  at  secrecy 
they  would  defeat  the  wrong-doer  in  advance. 
So  they  passed  a  law  which  enacted  that  for  the 
future  all  robberies  must  be  committed  in  public. 
The  story  goes  on  that  not  long  after  the  Act 
was  passed  one  of  the  law-abiding  criminals  of 
Gotham  announced  by  the  public  crier  that  he 
was  going  to  commit  a  robbery  at  such  a  time 
and  place,  and  invited  the  mayor,  town  clerk, 
parish  constable,  and  all  others  who  might  be 
interested,  to  witness  the  proceedings.  In  due 
course  these  functionaries,  attended  by  a  crowd 
of  their  fellow-citizens,  appeared  upon  the  scene. 
The  thief  also  turned  up  to  time,  and,  pointing 
to  a  jeweller’s  shop-window,  called  out  in  a  loud 
voice  that  he  was  going  to  begin.  Whereupon 
the  mayor  put  on  his  gold  chain,  the  town 
clerk  adjusted  his  spectacles  to  take  cognisance 
of  the  crime,  and  the  constable  made  ready  to 
arrest  the  criminal.  A  moment  later  there  was 
great  consternation.  The  gold  chain  had 
vanished  from  the  neck  of  the  mayor,  the 
town  clerk’s  spectacles  were  no  longer  on  his 
nose,  and  the  constable  was  crying  out  that 
somebody  had  stolen  his  handcuffs  ;  while  the 
thief  was  nowhere  to  be  seen. 


180 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


Turning  to  the  parallel  case  of  open  diplo¬ 
macy,  it  is  well  to  grasp  from  the  outset  that 
diplomacy  is  essentially  the  art  of  keeping  secrets . 
The  diplomat  against  whom  the  public  needs 
protection  is  not  the  diplomat  who  cannot 
keep  a  secret,  but  the  diplomat  who  can.  This 
gentleman  is  not  easy  to  bring  to  book.  He 
will  cheerfully  accept  the  law  which  requires 
him  to  divulge  all  his  secrets,  for  he  will  see 
in  a  flash  that  he  can  evade  the  law  when  he 
pleases,  and  even  make  it  serve  his  own  ends, 
by  the  simple  device  of  keeping  it  secret  that  he  has 
any  secrets  to  divulge.  He  will  be  open  as  the 
day  and,  at  the  same  time,  secret  as  the  night ; 
which,  oddly  enough,  are  only  two  ways  of 
describing  the  same  fact.  It  is  a  truth  well 
known  to  thieves,  spies  and  conjurers,  who  are 
diplomatists  of  a  kind,  that  no  man  can  be 
secret  as  the  night  until  he  has  persuaded  his 
neighbours  that  he  is  open  as  the  day.  He  has 
only  to  keep  it  secret  that  he  has  any  secrets 
to  divulge,  and  who  can  now  convict  him  of 
a  want  of  openness  ?  To  men  who  have  been 
keeping  secrets  all  their  lives,  trained  in  the 
school  of  secrecy  and  with  the  traditions  of  it 
in  the  marrow  of  their  bones,  the  keeping  of 


SECRET  DIPLOMACY 


181 


this  additional  secret  presents  no  difficulties  at 
all.  The  diplomat  who  understands  all  the  rest 
of  his  business,  but  doesn’t  understand  this 
part  of  it,  may  be  dismissed  from  consideration. 
Clearly  the  public  needs  no  protection  against 
him.  But  to  the  adept  diplomatist  our  pro¬ 
hibition  of  secrecy  will  merely  act  as  a 
reminder  of  the  conditions  essential  to  the 
success  of  his  art.  It  will  act  upon  him  in  the 
same  way  as  the  request  to  a  conjurer  to  declare 
what  he  has  got  up  his  sleeve.  He  will  promptly 
roll  up  his  sleeve  and  show  you  that  there  is 
nothing  there.  He  has  foreseen  that  openness 
would  be  required  at  that  point,  and  has  taken 
the  precaution  of  lodging  his  secrets  elsewhere. 

To  those — and  it  is  to  be  feared  they  are  the 
majority — who  treat  politics  as  a  problem  in 
machinery,  who  ignore  psychology,  and  forget 
that  the  ingenuities  of  the  human  mind  are 
always  the  determining  factor  in  human  affairs, 
these  considerations  will  appear  insignificant. 
Reasoning  in  their  usual  manner,  they  will  argue 
that  all  we  need  for  the  reform  of  diplomacy  is 
to  turn  it  from  a  machine  that  is  locked  up  into 
a  machine  that  is  open  to  public  inspection — just 
as  you  might  open  the  door  at  the  back  of  the 


182 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


town  clock  and  invite  the  citizens  to  watch  the 
wheels  going  round,  and  put  the  mainspring 
under  4 4  democratic  control.”  But  when  we 
realise  that  what  we  have  here  to  do  with  is 
primarily  the  diplomatic  mind ,  which  is  more 
artful  than  the  town  clock,  and  that  diplomacy 
is  simply  the  diplomatic  mind  in  action,  we  shall 
come  to  very  different  conclusions.  We  shall  not 
alter  our  opinion  that  candour  and  openness 
are  essential  to  the  right  conduct  of  inter¬ 
national  affairs,  but  we  shall  see  that  they  are 
not  to  be  had  from  the  diplomatic  mind,  and 
that  diplomats  are  the  last  people  in  the  world 
from  whom  to  expect  them.  The  diplomatic 
mind  is  not  made,  nor  trained,  for  openness. 
It  is  made  and  trained  for  secrecy  ;  it  is,  and 
must  always  be,  a  depository  and  guardian  of 
secrets.  On  any  other  terms  it  would  cease 
to  be  diplomatic.  Open  diplomacy  is  a  self- 
contradiction,  and  therefore  an  impossibility. 

If  any  diplomatist  should  chance  to  read 
what  is  here  written,  I  trust  he  will  not  find 
himself  held  up  to  condemnation.  He  is 
entitled  to  our  sympathy  and  respect.  As  a 
secret  agent  he  is  doing  the  work  which  his 
employer,  the  public,  commissions  him  to  do 


SECRET  DIPLOMACY 


183 


and  pays  him  for  doing.  Were  he  open  he 
would  be  false  to  his  trust.  He  has  no  more 
right  to  be  open  than  a  detective  has  when 
he  is  following  up  a  difficult  trail.  The  public, 
in  requiring  him  to  be  open,  is  simply  asking 
him  to  cultivate  a  new  form  of  secrecy. 
Heaven  knows  that  the  diplomatist  has  secrets 
enough  to  guard  already.  Why,  then,  load 
him  with  one  more — and  a  nasty  one  too — the 
secret,  namely,  that  he  is  secretly  outwitting 
the  public  by  professing  to  be  open  ?  Sorely 
tempted  under  the  best  of  circumstances,  why 
tempt  him  further  and  tempt  him  in  this 
abominable  way  ?  Who  can  blame  him  if  he 
acts  like  the  thief  in  my  story  and  gives  the 
public  which  is  asking  for  deception  precisely 
what  the  public  is  asking  for  ? 

It  would  not  be  true  that  in  the  work  of 
internationalism — I  use  the  word  in  the  sense 
applicable  to  any  believer  in  the  League  of 
Nations — the  diplomat  has  no  place  at  all. 
Even  internationalism,  grounded  as  it  is  on 
openness,  will  not  be  able  to  dispense  entirely 
with  him  or  with  his  secrets.  But  the  place  it 
has  for  him  is  secondary  and  subordinate.  It 
is  not  that  of  leader,  prime  agent,  or  guiding 


184 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


spirit.  As  one  of  its  many  servants,  inter¬ 
nationalism  can  give  him  a  modest  employ¬ 
ment  ;  but  as  master  of  the  situation  he 
will  inevitably  bring  the  whole  enterprise  to 
ruin,  and  no  less  inevitably  if  he  is  required  to 
be  open  than  if  he  is  allowed  to  be  secret.  He 
is  the  product  of  combative  nationalism,  bone 
of  its  bone  and  flesh  of  its  flesh,  a  person 
indispensable  to  the  aims  which  combative 
nationalism  has  in  view.  He,  with  his  secrets, 
belongs  to  the  world  of  the  balance  of  power. 
So  long  as  the  problem  is  that  of  “  balancing  ” 
the  claims  of  war-making  empires,  of  adjusting 
their  mutual  pressures,  he,  and  he  alone,  can 
pull  the  strings.  But  when  the  ideal  of 
balance  has  been  discarded  and  the  ideal  of 
co-operation  substituted,  he  is  no  longer  the 
man  for  the  leading  place.  His  presence  there 
will  immediately  arouse  suspicions  and  prompt 
the  counter-moves  of  all  the  other  diplomats 
whose  wits  are  pitted  against  his,  and  inter¬ 
nationalism  will  straightway  revert  to  the 
traditional  form  of  “  foreign  politics.”  Let 
the  League  of  Nations,  then,  beware  of  the 
diplomat  and  his  “artful  management  in 
securing  advantages.” 


COMPULSORY  EDUCATION 


Strictly  speaking,  there  is  not,  never  has 
been,  and  never  will  be,  such  a  thing  as  com¬ 
pulsory  education.  You  can  compel  parents  to 
send  their  children  to  school,  you  can  compel 
the  children  (within  limits)  to  learn  their 
lessons,  but  so  long  as  words  have  a  meaning 
you  will  never  compel  anybody  to  be  44  edu¬ 
cated.”  All  education  is  a  joint  operation  of 
teacher  and  learner,  and  unless  the  learner 
willingly  contributes  his  share,  nothing  that 
the  teacher  can  do  for  him,  or  compel  him  to 
do  for  himself,  will  make  him  an  educated 
human  being. 

No  matter  with  what  powers  and  terrors  the 
teacher  may  be  armed,  the  learner,  if  he  is 
so  minded,  can  always  thwart  him.  He  can 
thwart  him  by  forgetting  what  he  has  been 
taught.  He  can  thwart  him  by  refusing  to 
believe  it.  He  can  thwart  him  by  despising  it. 

185 


186 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


He  can  thwart  him  by  applying  it  to  the  pur¬ 
pose  opposite  to  that  for  which  it  was  intended. 
Of  course,  when  a  youth  has  acquired  a  certain 
mental  training  by  being  compelled  to  learn 
something  he  despises,  disbelieves,  or  is  deter¬ 
mined  to  forget — though  he  will  never  acquire 
much  mental  training  on  those  terms — some 
echo  of  this  discipline  will  always  linger  in  his 
mind.  But  he  may  still  turn  it  to  uses  which 
thwart  the  essential  objects  for  which  it  was 
given  him.  He  may  use  it  for  playing  the 
part  of  an  astute  rascal  or  a  clever  fool.  Put 
it  as  you  will,  the  learner  has  the  major  control 
of  the  situation.  He  can  only  be  educated  by 
his  own  connivance.  Education  is  by  consent, 
not  by  compulsion. 

The  word  “  education  ”  inevitably  suggests 
to  our  minds  the  picture  of  a  school.  We  see 
the  pedagogue  sitting  at  his  desk  and  ruling 
the  situation  with  a  rod  of  iron.  We  see  the 
children  on  the  forms,  submitting  to  a  system 
imposed  upon  them  by  wise  elders,  doing  as 
they  are  bid,  learning  what  they  are  given,  and 
being  caned  or  “  kept  in  ”  if  they  kick  or  refuse. 
“  Compulsion  ”  is  naturally  associated  with 
such  a  scene,  and  schoolmasters,  who  are  not 


COMPULSORY  EDUCATION 


187 


the  least  tyrannical  of  mankind,  are  only  too 
apt  to  accept  the  word  as  appropriate  and 
pleasing.  The  use  of  the  term  44  master  ”  or 
44  mistress  ”  to  define  the  school-teacher’s  office 
betrays  this  bias  towards  tyranny  in  a  very 
significant  manner.  We  have  only  to  read  the 
utterances  on  education  which  come  from 
sciolists  to  see  how  deeply  rooted,  and  how 
difficult  to  uproot,  is  the  notion  that  education 
consists  in  playing  the  part  of  44  master  ” — that 
is,  in  imposing  a  system  upon  those  who,  in  the 
last  resort,  must  be  coerced  into  receiving  it. 
The  learner — in  jacket  and  knickerbockers — 
does  not  know  what  is  good  for  him  to  learn. 
But  the  teacher — in  cap  and  gown — knows  ; 
and  the  relation  between  the  two  is  conceived 
accordingly.  The  teacher  is  44  master  ”  and  the 
learner  is — what  shall  we  say  ? — not  exactly 
slave  or  servant,  but  one  whose  essential  part 
in  the  joint  operation  is  even  more  submissive 
— to  learn  what  he  is  set  and  to  believe  what  he 
is  told.  Compulsory  education,  of  course  ! 

This  is  how  the  matter  co  es  to  be  con¬ 
ceived  when  we  treat  education,  as  we  almost 
invariably  do,  in  the  form  of  a  schoolmaster’s 
problem.  Fundamentally,  it  is  nothing  of  the 


188 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


kind.  It  is  a  social  problem,  and  the  biggest 
of  them  all.  It  is  a  question  of  the  type  of 
culture  best  suited  to  the  requirements  of  the 
age.  We  have  to  consider  not  alone  what  it 
is  abstractly  desirable  that  people  should  be 
taught,  but  still  more  what  they  are  capable 
of  assimilating  and  what  they  are  willing  to 
learn.  Viewed  in  this  large  way,  it  is  imme¬ 
diately  apparent  that  compulsion  is  out  of  the 
question.  You  can  never  impose  upon  the 
public,  upon  the  age,  upon  the  “  uneducated 
classes,”  a  type  of  culture  they  dislike,  distrust, 
and  are  unwilling  to  receive. 

Our  stock  image  of  a  party  in  jacket  and 
knickerbockers  on  the  one  side,  and  a  party 
in  cap  and  gown  on  the  other,  is  not  applicable 
to  the  world  at  large,  or  applicable  only  by 
putting  the  jacket  and  knickerbockers  on  those 
who  fancy  themselves  entitled  to  the  cap  and 
gown.  The  uneducated  classes  are  by  no 
means  willing  to  be  educated  on  the  under¬ 
standing  that  they  do  not  know  what  is  good 
for  them  and  that  “we”  do.  They  will  never 
accept  from  “  us  ”  a  type  of  culture  which 
they  do  not  value  and  have  no  opportunity  of 
applying.  To  quote  the  words  of  a  Yorkshire 


COMPULSORY  EDUCATION 


189 


operative  to  the  present  writer,  on  learning 
that  he  came  from  Oxford  :  “  Make  no  mistake 
about  one  thing  :  we  working  men  mean  to 
have  education  ;  but  we  are  not  going  to  take  it 
from  you” 

The  first  point  we  have  to  grasp  is  that  if 
we  are  to  have  any  success  with  education 
we  must  abandon  the  attempt  at  compulsion, 
and  must  dismiss  the  word,  bag  and  baggage, 
from  the  vocabulary  of  the  subject.  By  com¬ 
pulsion,  I  mean  the  policy  or  the  action  of 
an  intellectual  elite,  a  learned  aristocracy,  who 
think  themselves  possessed  of  the  right  or  the 
power  to  impose  their  type  of  culture  on  the 
world  at  large,  on  the  community  in  general. 
I  mean  the  notion  that  the  community  is 
divided  into  two  classes — an  educated  class  in 
cap  and  gown,  and  an  uneducated  class  in 
jacket  and  knickerbockers — and  that  the  former 
are  the  “  masters  ”  of  a  school,  in  which  the 
latter  are  the  pupils,  ready  to  learn  what  they 
are  taught  and  to  believe  as  they  are  bidden. 
Not  until  these  notions  have  been  utterly  dis¬ 
carded  and — I  must  add — not  until  the  airs  of 
superiority  which  usually  go  with  them  have 
been  finally  abandoned,  shall  we  be  in  a  position 


190  REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 

to  take  the  first  step  towards  real  and  vital 
education. 

If  the  educated  classes  would  give  themselves 
the  trouble  to  get  into  a  little  closer  touch  with 
the  uneducated,  their  eyes  would  be  quickly 
opened  to  the  truth  of  this  matter.  They  would 
discover  that  the  so-called  44  indifference  of  the 
masses  ”  to  education  has  been  wholly  mis¬ 
conceived  and  misnamed.  The  masses  are  not 
indifferent  to  education ;  but  they  are  'pro¬ 
foundly  distrustful  of  the  particular  sort  of  educa¬ 
tion  that  is  being  offered  them ,  and  for  good 
reasons  of  their  own.  Moreover,  they  bitterly 
resent  being  treated  as  the  jacket-and-knicker- 
bocker  party.  They  even  deny  that  they  are 
uneducated — or,  rather,  and  the  correction  is 
important,  they  deny  that  44  we  ”  are  educated. 
They  regard  us  as  a  very  inefficient  lot.  They 
think  that  they  understand  their  business  better 
than  we  understand  ours,  and  since  the  test  of 
education  is  the  understanding  of  one’s  own 
business,  they  are  convinced  that  we  are  less 
educated  than  themselves.  They  see  no  good 
to  be  gained  by  swallowing  “  our  ”  culture.  At 
the  present  time,  especially,  they  point  to  the 
appalling  mess  the  44  educated  classes  ”  have 


COMPULSORY  EDUCATION 


191 


made  of  things;  they  see  how  fatal  the  mess 
would  have  been  if  the  44  uneducated  classes  ” 
had  not  come  to  the  rescue ;  and  they  are 
more  than  ever  disposed  to  look  upon  the  cul¬ 
ture  we  offer  them  with  distrust.  Indeed,  they 
have  all  they  can  do  to  restrain  themselves 
from  bidding  us  44  get  out.” 

On  the  whole,  I  believe  they  have  sounder 
notions  of  education  than  we  have.  44  Educa¬ 
tion,”  they  say,  44  must  take  the  form  of  teach¬ 
ing  us  to  make  the  best  of  the  life  we  have  to 
live.  But  the  education  you  are  offering  us 
has  little  or  nothing  to  do  with  that  life.  It  is 
at  best  an  ornament.  It  has  done  you  little 
good — witness  the  mess  you  have  made  of 
things.  It  would  do  us  no  good  at  all.  It  is 
not  suited  to  the  life  we  have  to  live.  It  would 
hinder  us  far  more  than  it  would  help.  It  is 
a  foreign  product,  an  exotic  thing,  a  bit  of  a 
flower  garden  set  down  in  the  middle  of  a  corn¬ 
field.”  Such  are  their  thoughts  ;  but  let  no 
one  suppose  they  indicate 44  a  gross  materialism.” 
There  is  far  more  idealism  at  the  back  of  them 
than  appears  at  first  sight.  To  be  a  moral 
idealist  it  is  not  necessary  that  you  should  go 
up  and  down  the  world,  perhaps  in  company 


192 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


with  the  devil,  spouting  eloquence  about  the 
moral  ideal.  These  people  are  convinced  that 
their  life,  hard  as  it  is,  could  be  transformed 
into  a  fine  and  noble  life  if  only  they  were  edu¬ 
cated  for  that  object.  Their  complaint  is  that 
“we”  are  trying  to  educate  them  for  another 
sort  of  life  which  they  know  they  cannot  attain, 
and  are  not,  in  fact,  desirous  of  living.  And 
there  is  no  compulsion  which  can  make  them 
think  otherwise. 

If  anybody  doubts  these  things  let  him  con¬ 
sider  the  Germans.1  The  Germans  are  the 
typical  exponents  of  compulsory  education. 
In  their  own  eyes  they  are  the  educated 
class  of  the  universe,  and  their  policy  accord¬ 
ingly  is  to  impose  their  culture  on  the  rest 
of  mankind.  Germany,  observe,  is  to  be 
not  merely  the  master  but  the  schoolmaster  of 
all  nations.  She  alone  knows  what  is  good 
for  them.  She  alone  is  to  wear  the  cap  and 
gown  and  to  wield  the  rod.  The  others  are  in 
jacket  and  knickerbockers.  “  One  single  highly 
cultivated  German  warrior,”  said  Haeckel, 
“  represents  a  higher  intellectual  and  moral  life 
than  hundreds  of  the  raw  children  of  nature, 

1  Written  in  1918. 


COMPULSORY  EDUCATION 


193 


whom  England,  France,  Russia  and  Italy 
oppose  to  him.”  And,  as  though  this  were  not 
enough,  only  the  other  day  von  Kiihlmann 
spoke  of  compelling  the  goodwill  of  Germany’s 
foes,  so  that  we  are  not  only  to  be  forced  to 
accept  her  culture,  but  forced  to  accept  it  with 
delight  and  gratitude.  This  is  compulsory 
education  carried  to  its  logical  conclusion. 
Who  does  not  recognise  the  voice  of  the  self- 
styled  educated  class  dictating  to  the  unedu¬ 
cated  what  they  are  to  think,  to  believe  and 
to  practise  ?  And  how  do  we  answer  these 
would-be  German  “  masters  ”  in  the  school  of  . 
mankind  ?  Do  we  not  answer  precisely  in 
the  words  of  my  Yorkshire  friend,  “Yes,  we 
all  want  education.  But  we  are  not  going  to 
take  it  from  you  ”  ? 

In  many  of  its  aspects  our  educational  practice 
hitherto  might  be  compared  to  an  attempt 
to  grow  roses  in  Greenland.  And  the  worst 
of  it  is,  that  we  have  based  the  attempt 
on  arguments  which,  in  their  abstract  form, 
are  unanswerable.  What  flower  is  more  lovely 
than  the  rose  ?  What  country  needs  it  more 
than  Greenland — “  to  cheer  the  gloomy  land¬ 
scape  and  perfume  the  scentless  air”?  And 

13 


194 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


who  would  deny  the  beauty  of  the  culture 
founded,  as  our  whole  educational  system  still 
remains,  on  the  dear  old  classical  tradition  ? 
And  yet  this  culture  is  distinctly  exotic  to  the 
climate.  In  these  regions  of  sudden  frost  and 
long  winter  it  can  only  flourish  under  hot¬ 
house  conditions,  and,  when  one  comes  to 
reflect,  never  has  flourished  otherwise.  And  I, 
for  one,  am  all  in  favour  of  keeping  up  a  hot¬ 
house  here  and  there  for  the  devoted  culture 
of  this  beautiful  and  precious  plant,  for  I  doubt 
if  any  flower  of  native  growth  has  an  equal  in 
fragrance  or  loveliness.  But  it  can  never  be 
acclimatised  in  this  soil.  The  praises  sung  in 
its  honour  are  altogether  out  of  proportion  to 
its  actual  value  in  achieving  the  object  of 
education,  which  is  simply  that  of  teaching 
men  to  make  the  best  of  the  life  they  have  to  live. 

And  yet  for  generations  past  we  have  been 
trying  to  force  this  culture  on  a  civilisation 
which  cannot  sustain  it,  nay,  on  a  civilisation 
which  it  cannot  sustain.  This  is  what  I  mean 
by  growing  roses  in  Greenland.  The  roses  are 
good  for  Greenland,  but  Greenland  is  not  good 
for  the  roses — unless,  indeed,  we  cover  the  whole 
country  in  with  glass  and  set  up  a  heating 


COMPULSORY  EDUCATION 


195 


apparatus  of  sufficient  power  to  keep  it  warm. 
On  the  whole,  it  is  no  matter  for  surprise  that 
the  Greenlanders  are  44  indifferent  ”  to  these 
sage  proposals.  And  there  is  no  method  of 
44  compulsion  ”  which  can  make  them  any¬ 
thing  else. 

Abandoning  the  habits  of  mind,  and  the 
practice,  which  make  education  an  attempt  by 
one  class  to  force  its  culture  on  another  which 
does  not  want  it,  can  we  find  a  better  way  ? 
Is  it  possible  to  foster,  in  the  peculiar  conditions 
of  our  time,  a  type  of  culture  of  which  we  could 
say,  44  This  is  education  not  by  compulsion  but 
by  consent.  Here  teachers  and  taught  are  at 
one  in  what  they  value  and  in  what  they  desire. 
The  old  relation  of  cap  and  gown  versus  jacket 
and  knickerbockers  is  abolished.  The  old  idea 
that  the  one  side  are  all  potters  and  the  other 
side  all  clay,  no  longer  rules  the  situation. 
The  two  sides  are  now  co-operating  partners 
in  the  pursuit  of  a  common  aim.  Education 
has  become  reconciled  with  democracy”  ? 

I  believe  that  the  word  44  labour  ”  gives  us 
the  right  clue.  Not  that  education  should 
choose  its  tune  to  please  the  Labour  Party  ; 
still  less  that  it  should  aim  at  turning  us  all 


196 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


into  “  economically  efficient  instruments  ”  to 
please  the  employers.  As  to  both  of  these 
things,  God  forbid  !  I  am  thinking  of  labour 
in  terms  I  have  learnt  from  great  teachers.  I 
regard  it  as  the  very  stuff  or  raw  material  of  all 
human  life  and  the  “  pass-word  into  everything 
that  makes  life  worth  living.” 

A  very  few  simple  principles  need  to  be 
firmly  grasped.  First,  that  every  man  is, 
essentially,  what  his  labour  makes  him  ;  whence 
it  follows  at  once  that  unless  he  is  educated  by 
his  labour  he  is  not  educated  at  all.  If  his 
education,  conducted  on  the  roses-in-Greenland 
principle,  pulls  him  in  one  direction  and  his 
labour  pulls  him  in  the  opposite  direction,  the 
man  will  be  pulled  in  two,  but  not  educated — a 
proposition  which  holds  equally  true  of  the 
Viceroy  of  India,  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury, 
the  Lord  Chancellor,  and  the  meanest  hodman. 
The  educated  man  is,  before  all  else,  the  man 
who  understands  everything  about  his  own 
work,  and  enough  about  other  people’s  to  enable 
him  to  co-operate  with  them  intelligently  in 
the  social  complex.  Per  contra ,  he  who  under¬ 
stands  everything  about  somebody  else’s  work — 
for  example,  the  navigation  of  a  Roman  trireme 


COMPULSORY  EDUCATION 


197 


— and  next  to  nothing  about  his  own,  may  well 
stand  as  the  type  of  the  uneducated  man. 
Alas  !  there  are  many  such  in  these  days  on  the 
cap-and-gown  side  of  the  ditch.  To  this  we 
may  add  the  further  axioms — I  call  them  so 
because  they  are  among  the  most  indisputable 
truths  under  the  sun — that  the  only  happy  man 
is  the  man  who  enjoys  his  daily  work,  and  the 
only  good  man  is  he  who  does  it  to  the  best  of 
his  ability. 

Grasping  these  simple  principles,  we  come  in 
sight  of  our  objective.  The  aim  must  be  not 
merely  to  educate  labour,  but  to  see  to  it  that 
labour  becomes  an  education .  No  educational 
practice  is  worthy  of  its  name  which  stops 
short  of  seeking  to  turn  the  whole  labour  of 
the  community,  from  the  Viceroy  of  India*  to 
the  hodman,  into  one  vast  continuation  school. 
Which  is  as  much  as  to  say  that  education  is 
not  merely  a  schoolmaster’s  problem  (though 
it  includes  that),  but  a  social  problem  of  the 
first  magnitude — a  problem  never  to  be  solved 
in  isolation  as  an  affair  of  educational  experts, 
but  in  intimate  connection  with  a  wise  and 
broad  conception  of  the  general  needs,  aims 
and  values  of  social  life. 


198 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


It  is  high  time  to  have  done  with  this  Prussian 
tomfoolery  about  “  the  educated  class  ”  which 
is  to  “  compel  ”  the  “  uneducated  ”  to  learn  its 
lessons.  Strictly  speaking,  there  is  only  one 
class,  that  of  the  uneducated,  to  which  we  all 
belong .  As  a  community  we  have  still  to  learn 
the  ABC  of  education.  Let  us  then  school  our¬ 
selves  to  think  of  education  in  terms  of  labour, 
remembering  that  labour  is  the  common  stuff 
of  all  human  life,  and  giving  to  the  word  a 
meaning  sufficiently  broad  to  cover  every  man 
who  has  a  definite  status  and  occupation  in  the 
fabric  of  society.  The  labour  problem  and  the 
education  problem  are  not  two.  They  are  one. 


INSTITUTIONAL  SELFISHNESS 


There  came  to  me  some  time  ago  a  circular 
from  one  of  the  many  societies  which  have  been 
founded  for  promoting  the  cause  of  inter¬ 
national  peace  and  goodwill.  This  circular  was 
addressed  to  ministers  of  all  the  Christian 
Churches,  and  it  laid  down  certain  principles,  all 
of  them  excellent,  which  it  urged  the  Churches 
to  press  upon  public  opinion  and  upon  govern¬ 
ments.  Among  these  principles  the  chief  was 
the  duty  of  each  nation  to  make  some  sacrifice 
of  its  individual  interest  for  the  common  in¬ 
terest  of  them  all,  and,  if  I  remember  rightly, 
the  circular  went  on  to  say  that  the  inter¬ 
national  problem  would  remain  insoluble  until 
the  principle  of  self-renunciation  was  adopted 
all  round — an  eminently  true  remark.  When 
I  read  that,  a  question  at  once  occurred  to  me. 
“  When,”  I  asked  myself,  “  have  these  Christian 
Churches,  which  are  now  asked  to  unite  in 

199 


200 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


urging  the  principle  of  self-renunciation  upon 
governments,  ever  shown  a  disposition  to 
practise  that  principle  in  their  relations  with  one 
another  ?  When  has  any  one  of  the  Churches 
or  sects  to  which  this  circular  has  been  sent 
made  sacrifices  of  its  own  interests  for  the 
common  good  of  all  the  Churches  or  sects  ?  55 
I  could  not  think  of  a  single  instance.  So  I 
refused  to  sign  the  manifesto. 

Later  on  I  received  another  circular,  from 
another  Society,  proposing  a  League  of  the 
Churches — an  idea  evidently  suggested  by  the 
League  of  Nations.  In  this  circular  not  a  word 
was  said  about  self-renunciation.  On  the 
contrary  a  scheme  was  outlined,  the  express 
object  of  which  was  to  enable  each  of  the 
Churches  to  combine  with  the  others  without 
any  sacrifice  whatever  of  the  power,  the  in¬ 
fluence,  the  property  and  the  beliefs  which 
were  peculiarly  its  own.  The  principle  of  the 
scheme  was  indeed  that  very  doctrine  of  “  the 
balance  of  power  ”  which  the  first  circular  had 
asked  the  Churches  to  repudiate  in  favour  of 
the  principle  of  international  self-renunciation. 
This  also  I  refused  to  sign.  It  was  in  con¬ 
nection  with  these  two  circulars  that  the  words 


INSTITUTIONAL  SELFISHNESS 


201 


44  institutional  selfishness  ”  first  occurred  to  me 
as  applicable  to  the  Christian  Churches  of  to-day. 

On  the  ground  of  their  relations  with  one 
another,  the  Christian  Churches  do  not  offer 
the  world  an  example  of  lofty  morality.  The 
morality  they  display  in  those  relations  is  at 
the  best  of  a  middling  order.  At  that  point 
they  show  a  remarkable  lack  of  any  virtue  that 
might  fairly  be  called  heroic,  as  self-renuncia¬ 
tion  undoubtedly  is  ;  and  to  this  extent  they 
are  in  an  unfortunate  position  for  urging  these 
virtues  on  the  secular  institutions  of  mankind, 
on  governments,  nations  and  states.  They 
are  in  the  position  of  never  having  practised 
those  virtues  themselves.  Such  phrases  as 
44  The  good  of  all  is  the  good  of  each,”  44  The 
misfortune  of  one  is  the  misfortune  of  all,” 
do  not  illustrate  their  normal  attitude  to  one 
another,  but  condemn  it.  Their  attitude  seldom 
rises  beyond  the  level  of  passive  toleration. 
Of  active  co-operation  for  the  purpose  of 
helping  one  another  there  is,  so  far  as  I  can 
see,  none.  When  they  co-operate  it  is  for 
promoting  something  external  to  them  all, 
like  temperance  or  housing,  but  they  never 
co-operate  for  helping  each  other  forward  as 


202 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


Churches.  Certainly  I  cannot  recall  a  single 
action  on  the  part  of  the  other  Churches  which 
has  been  designed  for  the  purpose  of  helping 
forward  the  Church  to  which  I  belong.  The 
Churches  do  not  play  the  part  of  Good 
Samaritan  to  one  another.  If  they  no  longer 
attack  one  another  and  provoke  religious  wars 
to  make  good  their  claims,  they  still  remain 
essentially  self-assertive  and  unsympathetic  in 
their  official  relationships.  Am  I  wrong  in 
suggesting  that  just  as  the  principle  of  self- 
renunciation  all  round  is  the  only  principle 
on  which  the  nations  of  the  world  can  unite 
into  a  corporate  fraternity,  so  too  it  is  the 
principle  of  effective  union  among  Churches  ? 
Before  such  a  union  could  be  brought  into 
being  one  or  other  of  the  Churches  might  even 
be  required  to  consent  to  being  wiped  out  for 
the  glory  of  God.  I  see  no  trace  of  such  a 
disposition  anywhere. 

Indeed,  the  more  we  consider  the  inter¬ 
national  situation  the  more  analogies  does  it 
present  to  the  inter- Church  situation.  Inter¬ 
national  morality  and  institutional  morality 
appear  to  be  pretty  much  on  the  same  level, 
and  the  level  is  not  high.  At  least,  the  two 


INSTITUTIONAL  SELFISHNESS 


203 


things  have  much  in  common,  originating  in 
the  same  source  and  developing  thence  the 
same  habits  of  mind  and  the  same  type  of 
illusion.  Just  as  every  Briton  believes  that 
the  fortunes  of  civilisation  depend  on  the 
maintenance  of  the  British  Empire,  though  no 
foreigner  admits  it  for  a  moment,  and  just  as 
every  Frenchman  and  German  has  a  similar 
belief  about  his  own  nation,  so  we  of  the 
Churches  are  always  tending  in  practice,  if  not 
in  theory,  to  identify  the  fortunes  of  religion 
with  those  of  our  own  party  or  sect.  Few  of 
us  can  quite  conceive  of  religion  prospering 
if  our  sect  died  out.  When  St  Francis  de 
Sales  was  reproached  by  a  friend  for  endanger- 
ing  his  life  by  the  severity  of  his  labours,  his 
reply  was,  “It  is  not  necessary  that  I  should 
live,  but  it  is  necessarv  that  God’s  work 

J  ft/ 

should  go  on”;  and  I  suppose  that  many  a 
soldier  in  the  late  war  said  the  same  thing 
about  England  before  going  over  the  top.  But 
if  you  look  for  that  spirit  in  great  institutions 
you  find  as  little  of  it  in  the  corporate  life  of 
Churches  as  in  the  corporate  life  of  States.  In 
the  one  field  as  in  the  other  you  see  the  strife 
as  to  who  shall  be  greatest,  the  struggle  for 


204 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


power — in  the  one  for  power  over  the  bodies 
of  men,  in  the  other  for  power  over  their  souls, 
pursued  indeed  by  different  methods,  but 
betraying  similar  motives  and  leading  to  the 
same  type  of  unhappy  and  unbeautiful  re¬ 
lationships  between  the  competing  units.  In 
both  fields  you  see  the  entanglement  of  lower 
motives  with  higher,  in  which  the  lower  motives 
are  always  tending  to  get  the  upper  hand,  and 
often  actually  doing  so.  In  both  you  see  how 
the  higher  motives  are  invariably  brought 
forward  as  excuses  for  the  wrongs  perpetrated 
by  the  lower.  Thus  in  international  affairs 
direct  acts  of  spoliation  and  robbery,  which 
originate  in  robbers’  motives,  are  constantly 
exhibited  under  the  garb  of  patriotism  or  a 
just  interest  in  the  good  of  civilisation.  On 
the  other  side  the  jealousy  of  the  Churches  in 
guarding  their  vested  interests,  their  power, 
their  prestige,  is  easily  excused  as  due  to 
concern  for  the  salvation  of  souls.  In  both 
again  we  may  observe  how  the  secondary 
interests  of  the  machine  gradually  tend  to 
become  identified  with  the  primary  interests 
the  machine  was  intended  to  serve.  Men 
constantly  believe  that  they  are  serving  the 


INSTITUTIONAL  SELFISHNESS 


205 


greater  thing  when  in  truth  they  are  only 
serving  the  lesser — 44  strengthening  the  position 
of  the  Church,”  as  it  is  called,  and  fully  per¬ 
suaded  that  whatever  does  that  is  of  God. 

The  consequence  of  all  this  is  manifest  enough. 
In  their  relations  with  one  another  the  States  of 
the  world  are  content  with  a  level  of  morality 
which  is  far  below  that  of  a  decent  member 
of  any  State,  and  indeed  the  negation  of  it.  So 
too  the  level  of  interdenominational  morality 
— if  morality  is  the  right  word — is  far  below 
that  of  any  of  the  denominations.  Looking 
at  their  relations  with  one  another  as  in¬ 
stitutions,  the  outstanding  feature  of  all  of 
them  is  something  that  would  be  called  selfish¬ 
ness  if  it  existed  between  individuals.  Men 
have  noted  it — indeed  they  can  hardly  overlook 
it.  This  does  not  help  the  Churches  to  make 
effective  headway  in  their  proper  business. 

I  am  not  unacquainted  with  the  argu¬ 
ment  which  defends  institutions  as  necessary 
to  religion.  Taken  in  the  abstract  form 
this  argument  appears  to  me  unanswerable. 
But  like  most  unanswerable  arguments  its 
value  depends  on  the  applications  that  are 
made  of  it.  This  one  has  proved  itself  singu- 


206 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


larly  susceptible  of  misapplication.  Because 
institutions  are  necessary  it  does  not  follow 
that  you  must  have  as  many  as  possible,  and 
that  any  kind  will  do.  It  does  not  follow  that 
the  institutions  should  absorb  the  energy  needed 
for  the  religion  they  embody,  nor  that  policy 
should  take  the  place  of  zeal.  It  may  be  that 
the  value  of  institutions  to  religion  depends  on 
having  as  few  as  possible,  and  on  keeping 
them  as  inconspicuous  as  possible.  Obviously 
it  depends  on  having  them  of  the  right  kind, 
and  in  right  relations  with  each  other. 

Christianity  on  the  whole  has  been  unfor¬ 
tunate  in  the  institutions  it  has  created.  They 
have  been  of  a  kind  which  obscures  essentials 
and  leads  to  an  enormous  waste  of  energy 
on  secondary  objects.  The  genius  of  Chris¬ 
tianity  is  not  quite  at  home  in  the  Church 
or  Chapel  atmosphere  as  it  exists  to-day. 
Christ  Himself  would  be  ill  at  ease  in  all  of 
them,  and  amazed  in  some  of  them.  Observe 
that  I  am  speaking  of  the  institutions,  not 
of  the  individuals  who  compose  them.  Among 
individuals  good  representatives  of  Christianity 
are  to  be  found  in  all  the  Churches,  though  I 
must  add  that  some  of  the  best  Christians  I 


INSTITUTIONAL  SELFISHNESS 


207 


have  known  belong  to  neither  Church  nor 
Chapel — Christians  in  the  sense  that  they  lived 
Christ-like  lives.  I  am  aware,  of  course,  that 
many  great  authorities  would  not  allow  them 
to  be  Christians  if  that  was  all  that  could  be 
said  for  them. 

The  original  mistake  was  made  when  Chris¬ 
tianity  borrowed  the  type  of  its  institutions 
from  the  kingdoms  that  are  of  this  world,  the 
political  kingdoms,  with  which  in  an  evil  hour 
it  was  persuaded  to  enter  into  a  most  unnatural 
alliance.  To  Christianity  was  given  the  model 
of  a  heavenly  city,  but  instead  of  bringing  that 
city  down  to  earth,  it  made  for  itself  an  earthly 
model,  and  so  built  the  Tower  of  Babel  once  more. 
In  consequence  of  this  alliance  with  political  in¬ 
stitutions,  the  institutional  life  of  Christianity 
became  involved  in  the  fatal  struggle  for 
power,  which  its  mission  was  to  supersede. 
Instead  of  transcending  the  ethics  which  are 
proper  to  the  struggle  for  power,  it  adopted 
them,  and  gave  them  a  new  sanction  and  a 
wider  currency.  Its  creeds  became  entangled 
with  its  vested  interests,  so  that,  at  the  present 
moment,  it  is  almost  impossible  to  disentangle 
the  two.  Even  the  conception  of  God  took  on 


208 


REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 


a  political  form,  God  being  conceived  as  the 
cosmic  potentate,  ruling  the  universe  after  the 
Prussian  model,  under  a  system  of  iron  law, 
and  punishing  mutineers  with  death — the  very 
opposite  of  what  Christianity  means  when  it 
says  that  66  God  is  Spirit,”  46  God  is  Love.”  Or 
it  became  the  conception  in  44  God  save  the 
King,”  of  which  the  less  said  the  better. 
This  type  of  institution,  reflecting  the  main 
features  of  the  low  civilisation  Christianity 
was  intended  to  transform,  was  by  its  nature 
provocative  of  strife.  It  required  an  enormous 
expenditure  of  energy  in  self-defence  against 
other  institutions  similarly  designed.  The 
Churches  became  involved  in  the  defence  of 
interests  and  positions,  in  the  pursuit  of 
44  policy,”  and  the  Gospel  had  to  be  content  with 
the  energy  that  was  left  over  when  44  policy  ” 
had  been  provided  for.  These  reasons  have  led 
many  to  think  that  Christianity  has  not  been 
fortunate  in  the  kind  of  institutions  it  has 
created,  without  prejudice  to  the  abstract 
doctrine  that  religion  needs  institutions.  To 
thoughtful  men  of  other  religions  in  the  East 
this  aspect  of  Christianity  is  deeply  repugnant. 

The  ideal  type  of  institution  for  a  religion 


INSTITUTIONAL  SELFISHNESS 


209 


like  Christianity  would  be  one  which  was 
entirely  indifferent  to  its  own  fortunes  as  an 
institution ,  and  prepared  at  any  moment  to 
die  in  order  to  live.  The  distribution  of  its 
energies  would  be  the  reverse  of  that  which  now 
obtains.  Nearly  all  would  go  into  the  attack 
upon  the  gloom,  misery  and  ignorance  of  the 
world ;  next  to  nothing  would  go  into  the 
defence  of  vested  interests,  whether  they  take 
the  form  of  creeds,  property,  power,  position, 
or  prestige.  The  creeds  would  be  left  to  stand 
or  fall  according  to  their  success  in  saving 
men’s  souls  ;  for  unless  they  bear  that  test 
there  is  no  other  way  of  making  them  good. 
Everything  else  would  be  secondary  to  that. 
And  the  only  good  sectarian  would  be  the  man 
who  forgot  as  often  as  possible  to  what  sect 
he  belonged. 

So  far  as  I  am  aware  no  such  type  of  Chris¬ 
tian  institution  is  at  present  to  be  found  any¬ 
where  on  the  earth,  though  perhaps,  as  Plato 
would  say,  it  exists  in  the  heavens.  So  long 
as  it  exists  somewhere,  and  is  a  Reality,  it  does 
not  much  matter  whether  it  exists  here  or  there . 


14 


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NEILL  AND  CO.,  LTD., 
EDINBURGH. 


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